


Avalokan

by GetARoomKaiSoo



Category: ATEEZ (Band), Atiny
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Heavy Angst, Implied Sexual Content, It's a heavy fic so PLEASE read it at your own caution, JustTwoBoysInLove, M/M, Medical Condition, Mentions of Suicide, Readwithcaution, Romance, Sexual Content, Slice of Life, TW-Hospital, mentions of depression, one homophobic slur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24843790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GetARoomKaiSoo/pseuds/GetARoomKaiSoo
Summary: ***Wooyoung turns to look at San. He waves his hand as he calls for him to come over, russet skin standing out like flames against the ivory snow."I'm waiting, Haku-San." He shouts, cocking his head to the side.Wooyoung is blond again.He forgets to close the door when he leaves the room and never finishes a meal without staining the front of his shirt.He also laughs the loudest at forgotten jokes and never lets San clamber out of bed every morning without a half-awake kiss.So he goes, boots sloshing through the mounds of white jello spread across the uneven ground. He doesn't like the way the moisture seeps into the hem of his pant-sleeves. But he goes anyway.Because it is Wooyoung on the other side. It is Wooyoung who wants him close, plush lips smiling as he's pulled into a heavy kiss.And Wooyoung is his best friend.***
Relationships: Choi San/Jung Wooyoung, Jeong Yunho/Song Mingi, Woosan - Relationship, Yungi - Relationship
Comments: 62
Kudos: 112





	Avalokan

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this story for the past two months. It's grown to be too close to my heart and, like every author out there, I've hidden pieces of me in every syllable that you'll read. 
> 
> I can't reveal too much as of now, but if you're affected by any kind of trigger, or if you're not in the right mental space to handle any depressing scenarios please avoid reading the fic. Like seriously, don't read it if you even remotely think that you can't handle it. 
> 
> If you choose to continue anyway, I hope you enjoy the stay. (Also be respectful with your words, there's an actual person on the other side of your screen.) 
> 
> All the love,  
> H.

**Part One : Vineyard (Word count: 18,452)**

Wooyoung is blond again. He's sixteen and thinks it's funny to wear floral shirts over leather pants. He doesn't think about what the clingy fabric does to his thighs, or maybe he does. The stares go unacknowledged either way.

He drinks pool water by mistake every time they go swimming, San has to hear him ugly gag and whine whenever he breaks the surface, but he doesn't mind, and quietly wipes the moisture out of his eyes and waits for the boy to catch his breath. They have ice cream sandwiches after that, without fail, and he takes a large bite out of Wooyoung's kit-kat one for compensation each time.

He laughs too loud at forgotten jokes and climbs into San's bed every Friday night to drone about his courtship of the week. He lets him mumble into his chest until he falls asleep. He holds San’s waist as he snores and frowns every time he tries to move out of his grip. It's endearing. So San kisses his nose and pulls him in closer before adjusting the blanket around their frames.

He never finds Wooyoung by his side the next morning, only a scrawled note on the table by his bed that asks him not to be late for their study session later in the day. It pulls the corners of his lips down but he doesn't say anything about it.

And when he feels a tap on his shoulder the next Friday night, he flips his blanket over like always, body working on muscle-memory and not active thought.

Because at the end of all his exertions to keep himself afloat the entire day, when the last grain of sand wriggles out of the infamous waist of the hourglass, there is only one thought that hits his pillow along with his head at night, it stains the cotton fabric grey, the color of all his dreams.

Wooyoung is his best friend.

***

They're seventeen when Wooyoung buys his first car. It's a rundown Hyundai with moth-eaten backseats but San is proud nonetheless, he's seen the boy work too many jobs and skip too many meals to be anything but that.

His hair is yellow now, it makes him look like an unappealing Jolly rancher, but he pulls it off somehow. _Maybe it's the smile_ , San wonders whenever he has time to spare, _he smiles like he's in love with every person he meets_. It makes him want to cover the boy's face with his shirt.

He's the first one to ride in Wooyoung's car, the human sweet-corn pulls up into his driveway at six-thirty on a Sunday morning and honks until all the birds have left their town. San's mother pulls him out of bed and asks him to _Take care of that abomination or she'll send his bottom zooming home with her fly swatter._

Wooyoung’s upper body is sticking out of the window on the driver’s side when San puts his still-drowsy head out of his balcony door to see what all the commotion is about. It's drizzling, doughy grey clouds minding their celestial business in the sky, and Wooyoung pushes the dye-dripping hair out of his eyes as he smiles up at San.

"Come down before I bleed all over your front porch, loser." He calls.

San takes the stairs two at a time, his toothbrush and paste hanging out of his pocket. They drive out of the city and eat churros and slushies for breakfast. Wooyoung floors the pedal when they drive over the jade hill slopes, never taking his eyes off of San's face as he giggles at the speed, there's something about that crystal sound. By the time they get back home late in the evening his blue shirt looks like it's been very unprofessionally tie-dyed due to his hair. San helps him bleach the wiry locks again the next morning.

He goes brown this time.

***

It's late in November when he hears Wooyoung knock roughly on his door and San can already tell that something isn't right. He lets the haggard boy in, who then proceeds to pace wordlessly across his bedroom floor. San watches quietly for all of five minutes before his patience runs bone-dry.

"Who died?" He asks as he sits over the edge of his bed.

Wooyoung stops to scowl at him. "This is not funny, San."

"Then tell me what I'm supposed to be serious about."

Wooyoung sighs and looks like he's already lived through a century and a half, maybe even survived a couple of wars. "My girlfriend, Sannie. She thinks she's pregnant."

San thinks he hears a crack in his ribcage. He ignores the gory sound. "What do you mean, _thinks_?" He asks, throwing a hand up in confusion. "You didn’t use the rubber?"

"I don't know. I mean, maybe, there was this one time... But we were drunk and... I don't know, San!" Wooyoung looks like he's about to disintegrate over his woolen carpet.

"I mean, there are chances that it might have happened even if you did use it." Comments San and the words earn him a seething glare that shuts him right up.

He gets up off the bed and pads over cautiously to the active volcano in the middle of his room and gathers the boy into his arms. Wooyoung snuggles into his chest and locks his wrists behind his back. His bed-lamp throws a dull orange veil over them as they sway like those toy figurines that San's sister collected as a child.

"You should go with her to the hospital." San whispers against the boy's temple. "Is she going today?"

Wooyoung nods, the movement ruffling the fabric over San's arm.

"Then go with her. Imagine how scared _she_ is. You don't want her to go through this alone, do you?"

"No." Wooyoung says, but it's barely louder than a sigh.

"Then be with her. And whatever happens come back here, okay? We'll figure this out. I got you." The words feel heavy as they roll off his tongue, but he understands that they're necessary.

Wooyoung shakes his head out of the embrace, and looks up at him. His bottom lip sticks out and San belatedly realizes that he's been sobbing all along. He frees an arm to wipe the moisture away from his cheek.

Wooyoung leans into his touch and puts a hand over his to keep it in place. "Would you hate me if I asked to kiss you now?"

San is halfway through a breath and forgets to keep going. "It wouldn't be right." He whispers.

Wooyoung looks away, defeated, even a little scared if San squints the right way. "Of course. I'm... I'll leave."

He makes as if to move away from San, but that only causes the taller boy to tighten his grip around his waist.

"Hey." He says. "Look here, Wooyoung."

He lifts his gaze to meet San's and notices something new in his eyes. Or maybe something old that he was blind to all along. Maybe even on purpose.

"You really want this?" He asks and Wooyoung nods.

"You're not going to regret it tomorrow?"

He shakes his head.

San brings his face down but pauses when he's a hair-length away from his lips. "This.” He breathes, grazing the tip of his nose against Wooyoung’s. “This has rid me of sleep on so many nights.”

Wooyoung scrunches his face. “Creepy.” He comments.

San is startled, but he doesn’t move away. “Not like that…” He splutters. “Oh, god, you idiot. That’s not what I-” He sighs in frustration.

And then he’s serious again, eyes alight. “If I knew this is how you look before a kiss..."

The tail end of his words are lost as Wooyoung reaches up to steal that kiss of his. His hands go over to settle themselves into the boy's coffee curls and he moans into his mouth when Wooyoung slips cold fingers under his shirt.

He pulls away, soft, slow, as if he’s just waking up, a decade or so later, and looks at San's bottom lip that shines slick with his spit.

"We're fucked." He declares.

"Through and through." San agrees.

Wooyoung calls him later in the evening and San slides his home-work aside to take his phone out to the balcony. The cold wind nips at his cheek, infusing an anthocyanin blush into his skin.

"It was a false alarm. Something wrong with the stick or whatever." Wooyoung tells him and he _feels_ the relief that he hears in the boy's voice.

"I apologized." He continues when San doesn't reply. "She wants nothing to do with me. Said it's over."

San sighs as he looks at the acorn tree in his front yard. "Come over." He speaks into the phone.

"I'm on my way."

***

Wooyoung gets angry in silences, his indignation characterised by turned backs and grunted responses rather than clenched fists or barked curses. It is not something new to San, who has known the boy even before they'd learned the word that would identify the red emotion, but it is strange to him, nonetheless. 

For someone whose first response to any problem in life is to get inexplicably mad at it, he can't wrap the layers of his own primitive brain around the way Wooyoung handles himself when something irks him over the boundaries of his patience pool. 

Where San's anger is burgundy, boiling blood and misplaced words, Wooyoung's is blue, a geothermal lagoon beneath his marmoreal skin. And San learns him in the minutes, taking note of the way the boy's exasperation manifests itself in the bags or vessels that are placed over the floor with more force than is really necessary, or in his refusal to be touched, even when the gesture is as mundane as half a hug. 

Wooyoung's anger doesn't char but smoulders and San learns to get comfortable with the gentle heat. 

***

A new boy joins San's school in their junior year. He's tall, always sits at seats closer to the wall and walks with his hands clasped in the front. _He makes himself small_ , San thinks as he watches the boy slink against the doorframe one morning as a couple of their classmates bustle out of the room. _As if he's afraid of getting in anybody's way_. 

When he finds the boy hunched over his plate, alone at the hustling cafeteria during lunch three days later, Wooyoung holds San’s wrist and drags him over to the table at the corner. 

"Mind if we sit here?" He asks and the boy adjusts the gold-rimmed glasses he's wearing as he looks up at them in surprise. He has a button nose and a half-smile. "Everywhere else is full."

He glances around the cafeteria, surely noticing the many empty chairs littered around the space before turning to Wooyoung and giving him a small nod. 

_King of subtlety_ , San thinks and rolls his eyes.

The boy gestures to the seats in front of him and San notices his sweater paw.

"Please." He says and they flop down with their plates. 

"I'm Wooyoung." He states, stretching his hand out over the table to the boy. "This is San."

"Hello." San says with a little wave. 

The boy smiles at him as he shakes Wooyoung's hand. "I know. I have History with you two." He tells them. 

"Do you now?" Wooyoung taunts and the boy laughs, adorably uneven teeth on display. 

"I'm Mingi." He announces. San wonders if he's imagining it, but the boy actually sounds relieved as the name slips out of his mouth. 

They attend the rest of their classes together and Mingi asks his driver to go home when Wooyoung offers to give him a ride after school. "No, I'd like to go with you guys." He says when Wooyoung tells him that he can just go in his car (an Audi, San notes with a half-open mouth), they won't mind.

“No, I’ll go with you.” Mingi repeats as San peeks in through the tinted windows with his hands cupped around his eyes. Wooyoung pulls him back by the collar of his shirt. "If you're fine with it, that is." He adds as a nervous after-thought. 

"Of course we are." San assures him, throwing a scowl at Wooyoung. "I'm sick of bad company, anyways."

Mingi laughs again and San thinks, _that sounds nice._

They stop at an ice-cream shop and Wooyoung pays for all their Sundaes. Words and boisterous laughter is exchanged amidst the thrum of the haggard evening dairy-seekers until a kind waitress kicks them out with only around a hundred inquires about when they’re planning on leaving the place.

Mingi waves his hand in large curves, zealous wipers cutting the chilly twilight wind, a consuming smile on his face as they drive away from the large steel gates of his house that evening.

***

San kneels by the edge of his bed, a frown pulling his brows together as he dabs tincture on the split skin by Wooyoung's lips. The boy flinches even before he brings the brown liquid up to his face.

"Stop fidgeting." San chides, smacking his forearm. "You should've thought about it before you got into the fight."

It is the kind of night that mosquitoes adore. San can feel the big bead of sweat meandering down his back. Wooyoung tsks as he tries his hardest to stay still.

"Mingi only held his hand, San." He explains, and San watches his irises freeze over as he relives his evening. "They called him a faggot. I didn't even know people still used that word. He should be allowed to hold hands with whoever he wants."

"So you just punched him in the face?"

"I just shoved him a bit."

He can hear San's teeth grind together and pulls away when the boy dabs the cotton against his wound with more force than necessary. "Ouch." He seethes.

"And Mingi just stood there when they beat you up?"

"He was scared."

"You should be, too." San tells him.

He tosses the cotton into the trash can by his bed before placing the lid over his first aid box. He shakes his head as he climbs to his feet and walks over to his cupboard to tuck the box back into its shelf.

"You think a week's suspension will look good on your report card?" He snaps, turning around to fix a glare on Wooyoung as he crosses his arms across his chest.

A car honks as it speeds past his front yard and the moon decides to peek through his window. Wooyoung drops his gaze to the carpet around his feet.

"Those colleges you've applied to. Think they'll be thrilled to take in a rowdy student?" He asks.

It turns out be a rhetorical question.

"Do you want to get out of here or not, Wooyoung?" There's exasperation in his voice, it makes him sound older than he is. Too tired for his age.

A slow nod is his response. San ambles back over to the bed and sits down beside his best friend.

"Then be good." He tells the wooden study table in front of him.

He leans back until his head hits the mattress and stares at the off-white paint of his ceiling. Long minutes pass before arms curl over his chest and a head rests against his neck.

He cards his fingers through Wooyoung's bleached curls. The boy adjusts his position to look up at him and San swears he sees a tiny flashlight turn on behind his pupil, liquefying the murky glacier from before.

"You're my Haku." He says.

"Haku?"

"Kohaku."

San rolls his eyes and snorts. "I clearly can't save you from all the Yubabas of the world."

Wooyoung frowns at the velvet button of his pajama shirt as he thinks. "Not like that." He says, shaking his head. "It's not about saving me all the time."

"What is it about then?" San brushes his eyebrows with a lazy finger until all the little hairs are perfectly in line.

Wooyoung smiles up at him before he answers. "You remember my name for me."

"That makes no sense."

"To me it does."

He places a peck on his midriff.

"My Haku-San."

***

"Let's do some eulogy-worthy things." Announces Mingi.

It is summer break. August is a weekend away and half the town is empty. With all the labourers making the best use of their paid vacation, the asphalt streets have grown more accustomed to the pelting raindrops than hurried footsteps.

The three of them are lounging on the shingles outside Wooyoung's bedroom, slowly sipping on their bottles of cherry lemonade. Wooyoung's free hand is tracing absent-minded circles on the sleeve of the tweed sweater that San is wearing. 

"Eulogy-worthy things?" San inquires as he looks over at Mingi, who has his arms crossed across his face. 

"Yes. Eulogy-worthy things." He affirms, baseless indignation tainting his voice. "You can't stand and drone on about absolutely nothing in front of my coffin, San. Yes, I've been a great son and am probably more loyal than an old Alsatian but if you bring up those shitty things at church I'll lift my dead ass up and come smack you in the face."

"And what do you want to do?" It is Wooyoung's turn to cross examine the subject. 

"I don't know."

"We can go skinny dipping at the quarry.”

San shivers at the thought. Wooyoung turns to give him a concerned glance. He shakes his head.

Mingi uncovers his face just to roll his eyes at Wooyoung. 

"Have you seen San swim? Maybe something that doesn't involve asphyxiation." 

___

Midnight is greeted with an overcast sky and the kind of silence that thickens the air in pricey art galleries. By the time Mingi's Audi rolls into their driveways like a ghost-ship over still water San and Wooyoung are already at their main doors, standing like silent sentinels with their jackets draped over their arms. 

When Mingi stands beaming before a set of hulking wrought-iron gates three hours later, San can barely help the uneasiness that causes his toes to go numb. 

"So your idea of a "eulogy-worthy thing" is getting murdered?" San's air-quotes fall to his sides when the meaning of his own words hits him. He looks up at Mingi in a mixture of horror and awe. "Boy, you have a sick sense of humour."

It's an abandoned vineyard, one that managed to get all the cities within a fifty mile radius classy-drunk up until a decade ago, as Mingi very kindly points out when he's making his way across a stony path between the thickets. 

"They used to have tours up here every Saturday." Says the boy who is pulsing with so much energy that San can almost see a ball of light in his chest. 

Wooyoung stumbles over an uneven patch of earth and Mingi steadies him with an arm around his waist. San looks around with fascinated eyes, at the barbed wires that run for endless metres on both their sides and the stone posts that stand like fallen warriors amidst the ruins. 

_What stories can you tell me?_

"Someone brought me here for the first time when I was fifteen, I was angry at my parents for pulling me out of my dance classes. I was miserable, whining the whole way.” Mingi smiles to himself at the memory, which makes San want to hold his hand and walk back all those miles in time.

“But I more or less shut up for the entire evening when we came here, though. I don't know how nice this place was before but nothing compares to this.” He adds as he emerges through a widening in the path.

And boy, is he right. 

San can count on the fingers of his right hand the number of times something has managed to knock the breath out of his system. But the sight before his eyes right now is easily marvellous enough to get him to fold his thumb over. 

"This used to be the wine tasting centre. But a bout of horrible rains blew the top over a few years ago....” The boy explains but it's easy to phase away from his voice as San gets closer to the wrecked dais that he's talking about. 

The many lanes of vines converge around the clearing and the dilapidated wooden pillars littered around the raised stage reach up to the charcoal skies like gnarly fingers from the underworld. He hears the sigh that escapes Wooyoung's mouth and holds on tightly to the arm that reaches out for his hands. 

_I know._

_____

Mingi's words funnel the minutes of the night until time is a viscous liquid dropping in sluggish beads upon the floor of a cosmic tumbler. He speaks of failed finances and desperate decisions, of the hand that led him here one November when innocence was still a virtue and not a sacrifice he made at the threshold of everything divine and truth-less, about how life is a dab of paint on a spinning top, bound to go colourless and invisible with an increase in momentum, ask anyone who has cared to watch. 

Mingi speaks until silence is the only topic left to be understood. And then he laughs, the sound too full of life for a place like this, a few octaves too loud for a night this dark. 

"I'll have to marry you now." He states and that makes San laugh, too. 

They are seated on the dusty floor of the ragged stage and Wooyoung is fast asleep on his lap. The air tingles with the oncoming of a flimsy drizzle and the universe decides to hold its breath for a little longer. 

They don't leave till dawn. 

***

When pineapple sunshine hits the soft folds of his blue blanket it turns the fabric into a translucent membrane, making San feel like he's in the gut of some large animal, or maybe within a hyper-realistic hologram. There's a head laying on his chest, bleach-damaged turquoise hair fanning out across the collar of his shirt. San finds himself sighing due to the pressure of Wooyoung's flushed cheek against the near-clammy surface of his torso, it reminds him of a paper-weight that's been on the coffee table of his house since before his birth.

He knows that Wooyoung is still awake, judging by the lack of the sleep-evened breathing and the distracted thumb that is tracing nonsense words over the thick band of his sweatpants. But he is still surprised when the boy lifts himself away from his body, gem-studded gaze fixed on San's face as he hovers in a half crouch over his belly. 

San raises his eyebrows in inquisition. _Need anything?_

Wooyoung frowns as he shakes his head and moves again, this time settling down in a lazy straddle across San's hips, forming an unstable tent out of the downy blanket. The action makes fitting alterations to San's breathing pattern as he wonders what's next in line, deft fingers finding purchase over the dip in Wooyoung's waist in dull anticipation. 

They haven't waded too far beyond the start line in terms of physical intimacy, their breathless conquests restricted to lengthy make-out sessions to occupy the lulled evening hours, maybe a hand or two that have been dipped below taut waistbands, some hickeys left behind like fleshy post-its, screaming 'Look, I was here!' in their primitive language of colours. So the way San's heart thuds against its visceral layers is of no surprise to him.

But the way Wooyoung flattens his hands sideways across San's face has nothing sensual about it. Gentle, yes. Erotic, hell no. 

The boy proceeds to run his inquisitive fingers over the dip of skin beneath San's eyes, the smooth plains of his cheek, the rouged elevation of his mouth and back up again to the forehead. San lets the boy have his way, lying pliant under him as he works his way down to the smooth contours of his collarbones. Then he notices that Wooyoung has his eyes closed. 

He frowns as he takes a gentle grip over the boy's wrists. "What are you doing?" He inquires, voice calm but playful along the distant edges. 

Wooyoung's eyes fly open and he purses his lips before answering. If San didn't know him better he'd assume that the boy was shy. 

"Learning you." Says Wooyoung and he leans down until their bare chests are only a few inches away, arms resting on either side of San's head. "It sucks that I might only recognise you if there's light. What if the Sun gets snuffed and I have to find you in the darkness?"

San snorts and Wooyoung smacks his arm before moving down to latch his mouth onto the side of his neck. His lips move in a warm stripe from the end of his ear down to the rise of his shoulder. 

"If the Sun gets snuffed out we'd have bigger things to worry about." Comments San. He hisses when Wooyoung gnaws on a soft spot below his neck. 

Wooyoung ignores his quip and says, "I want to be able to pick you out of a line-up even if it's pitch-black." He renders a column of open-mouthed kisses until he reaches the sharp curve of San's cheekbones. He then lays his forehead against his, the tips of their noses touching. 

When he speaks, San can feel the movement of his mouth against his own. "I want to be able to see you. Light or no light."

***

San starts calling Mingi Geyser.

“Have you seen the way you smile? It warms up my entire heart.”

***

Mingi tries to kill himself in October. It's a Sunday and he's wearing his favourite clothes. 

___

His mother calls Wooyoung and it takes a while for her to make sense through the sobs. 

"I didn't know who else to call." She says and Wooyoung hears the slew of vehicles in the background. “His father left for the States yesterday.”

"Which hospital?"

He picks up a puffy-eyed San on his way to the establishment. Mrs. Song gives them a slow nod when she sees them at the corridor on Mingi’s floor, her eyes are a network of red veins and her hands tremble when Wooyoung reaches out to hold them.

They don’t talk until the doctor walks out.

___

It's the next evening and Wooyoung and San are returning from the hospital's little cafeteria, holding a bowl of sorry looking fruits and a packet of flavoured milk in their hands. The corridors are not as busy this time of the day so they get to walk side by side and not tiptoe behind one another like a scared group of ants. 

"Go home and get some rest." San says as they're climbing the flight of stairs that lead to the second floor. "Come back in the morning."

"I'm okay." Wooyoung insists as he stabs a square of watermelon with a toothpick and stuffs it into his mouth.

"You look horrible. More so than usual."

Wooyoung rolls his eyes. A load of people exit the elevator and they stand by to let them disperse. "I just need a bath." He declares.

"Yeah, so go home and get a shower." San sprays a little bit of his drink on Wooyoung's face. He wipes it away with a bored hand. 

"Not happening."

"We decided we wouldn't fight. And that means you have to listen to me." 

Wooyoung frowns at him. "When did we decide that?"

"When you were drooling over my shoulder last night."

Wooyoung shakes his head incredulously. "We wouldn't talk if we didn't fight."

San takes a deep inhale and is about to argue (ironically) when the look on Wooyoung's face causes the words to tumble back down his throat. They're in the doorway to the semi-private ward that Mingi is residing in and they see the boy sitting up on his elevated bed, gazing out of the window on his side, fingers worrying the IV patch on his wrist. 

He looks up at them and offers a pliant smile that'll probably look more at home on a child's face. San clenches his teeth at the sight. 

_We were so close to never seeing that again._

"I've always wanted to get my stomach pumped." Mingi announces as San goes over to sit on his side. Wooyoung leans against the wall and crosses his arms across his chest. 

"You idiot." San hits him on the arm, a gentle smack with no real intent. His voice trembles as he speaks. "You're not allowed to do that. You don't get to do that."

Mingi flashes him a surprised scowl and turns his gaze to Wooyoung. "What soap opera did he slip out of?" 

That earns him a harder swat on the thigh and he laughs. "I'm okay, San-ah. I'm fine. See," He points at his chest. San notices the way his fingers tremble. "Still breathing."

He looks around at the dimly lit ward and frowns. "Now, where's my mum? I'll have to brace myself before I get to that."

___

It takes three days for the doctors to be convinced that Mingi is well enough to be discharged. Mrs. Song pulls San aside in the morning, her eyes darting around restlessly in their sockets. 

"I'll go and set things up first, San." She tells him, fingers digging unconsciously into the flesh of his forearm. "I'll go clean up a bit. I don't want him to come back and be reminded of... Anything."

She looks up at him, her eyes the size of golf balls, and he wonders if she thinks she's making sense. _How do you forget the need to stop existing?_

_What kind of redecoration cleanses the taste of those pills from your tongue? Those pink-film tablets on your shivery palm that seemed to be the only way out?_

But he agrees. Because the woman looks so frail and lost in her blue dress that San is afraid that a no will crack her at the seams. So Mingi’s parents go home first.

___

They ride in Wooyoung's car and Mingi takes the front seat. The stereo plays static-ridden Jazz numbers from the nineties and Wooyoung is tapping his fingers to the beat over the steering wheel. 

San sits with his legs crossed over, gazing out of the windshield. The Sun is a glowing ping-pong ball a few centimetres above the horizon. Mingi is staring out of his window, too, at the emerald rice fields that mark the town's outskirts. 

It takes them a few moments too long to recognise the sobs, the monotonous roar of the engine drowning the soft sound out, but when they do hear the mellow gasps of breath San and Wooyoung’s eyes meet in the rear view mirror. 

San slides forward in his seat and places a hand on Mingi's shoulder. He doesn't respond for a while as he continues to look out through the window, the breeze blowing his hair around his head and San is unsure if he's even heard him. 

He is about to call his name again when the boy turns around to look at him, his now-sallow cheeks shining due to the moisture. "I'm so sorry." He whispers. "I'm sorry." 

Cherry lips tremble with a pain so monumental the boy seems to crack open before San's eyes, a different kind of blood pouring through his skin now, this one stains him and Wooyoung red, too, and they haven't even touched Mingi yet.

Wooyoung reaches a hand over to wipe his face. 

"Hey. Mingi." San utters in a tiramisu voice, quiet and mellifluous, as his own tears battle for release behind his lids. "It's okay." 

Mingi shakes his head and a few strands of unwashed hair stick to his temple. "I didn't know what else to do." He splutters. "Even the nights had become too loud, San. How else could I sleep? I just wanted to sleep."

San puts his arms around the boy's shoulder and pulls him against his neck. "Ssh, Mingi. It's okay." He coos, hating how lacking his words seem, hating how nothing would be the right thing to say now. 

"I'm sorry." Mingi continues to sob into his shirt. "I couldn't even leave you a note. You would've liked those sappy things."

San scoffs before he can help himself. _No note can take your place in my days, you idiot._

"Come here." He says. 

Long limbs messily climb over the gear shift, Wooyoung holds onto his hip as Mingi makes his way over to the back seat. He curls into San's side, head resting on his chest, wiry legs draped over his thighs. 

"It's okay." He speaks into the boy's hair. "You're okay, now. We got you, baby. We have you, now."

He rocks them back and forth until the tears quiet down to sniffles. And then Mingi sleeps, warm against San's chest, he dozes until they get home. Then he curls up in his bed, arms thrown around Wooyoung's waist, hands curled into fists behind his back. 

_You’re Gatsby’s green light_ , thinks San as he watches the giant boy lying pretzel-like around Wooyoung, face placid in all its dozing glory.

They stay for the night. 

***

Mingi does this thing when he laughs, San watches the boy's face whenever Wooyoung does something silly.

It starts in his eyes, which go big before they dissolve into half-moons in his face. Then his mouth opens, jagged teeth moving apart with his slack mandible. A squeaky breath, a conscious prologue to his laughter, as if he's mustering all the air first so that he doesn't have to stop in between. 

And a little scoff. 

He blinks. 

That's when it starts. Soprano laughter that is a potent disclaimer to his bass voice. His head is thrown back, little by little, until his chin is pointing to the sky. 

It's like watching a mountain melt, halogen lava sprayed into the air, cerulean glaciers running down his sides. 

San watches and forgets to laugh back sometimes. Wooyoung has to pat him on the back. 

***

San plucks a blade of grass, two, runs his pinkie over the narrow, damp surface. Throws it away.

The air is thick, tinted orange, results of Mrs. Song's efforts of making fried fish for lunch. A chiffon veil of a breeze blows, it's arid and does nothing about the heat, but it diffuses the choking stink. San is grateful. 

He's lying on the dank lawn of Mingi's backyard, crossed knees pointing up at the listerine sky, as the boy waters the begonia bushes that look like they could've used the liquid rescue a week ago. San's mother would've cringed at the sad sight.

"It's gotten unbearable, Mingi." He whines, voice and face so desperate they belong on a couch, before someone who's paid to analyse them. "Today we almost paid attention in History."

Mingi laughs from his hunched position behind the blue hose, an airy sound that drifts over the stone compound and billows out into non-existence when a pickup truck zooms past the adjacent street. 

"That bad, huh?" He places two fingers over the mouth of the pipe and the heavy flow diffuses to little sprinkles. 

"I'm telling you," San rolls over onto his stomach and pouts at Mingi's back. "The corridors are forlorn, even the cheesecake they serve at cafeteria tastes like rubber without you at the table, insulting us for all we're worth."

Mingi turns to look at him with his head tilted to the side, eyes incredulous. _Bullshit_ , they say, _save it for the English papers_. 

And San wants to protest, argue at the top of his lungs, about how he's not bluffing, the hallways really are empty, what good are crowds when someone amidst them isn't looking over the heads to find you? 

"When are you coming back?"

The boy sighs, heavy and long. It recites stories of exhaustion, of fingers too tremulous to sit through advanced Math, and a boy too small for suffering this big. 

"Soon." He says. 

___

Soon turns out to be a month and three days long. 

___

When Mingi calls him San-berry for the first time he thinks it's by mistake. 

A slip of the tongue. A sleight of wind. 

They're amidst the mid-lunch bustle of the school hallway.

San can only think of a hundred million reasons why he could have heard him wrong. So he lets the word slip away from the forefront of his brain, along the squelchy pink folds until it’s far enough to not return unless he summons it.

The second time is in Mingi's bedroom. All the windows are shut so he can't really go about blaming the nature for warping words. 

The two of them are sitting hunched over a spread of math textbooks and Mingi says, "Pass me the ruler, San-berry?" 

It is off-hand, uttered without a second thought. As if that's how he addresses San in his head all the time. 

"What did you call me?" Asks San, flummoxed, smiling to let the boy know that he's not completely offended. 

_Should I be?_

Mingi looks up with wide eyes, cheeks pulling up stage curtains in embarrassment. 

"San-berry." He whispers, as if he's afraid of all the evil that the word might summon. 

"Okay." San nods. "That's cute." 

He's about to return his attention to solving the polynomial equation when Mingi starts waving his hands in front of his face. 

"No, no, no." He starts. "Let me explain."

San chortles as he drops his pen and turns to sit cross-legged in front of the boy. 

"Go ahead."

Mingi scratches the back of his head. "Like cranberry." He says. 

They blink at each other. One Missisippi. Two.

"Oh. Okay. Thanks. I feel enlightened now-" San is about to flop back around when Mingi laughs and holds onto his arms. 

"No, you idiot." He chides. "Cranberry, the shrubs, they’re wonderful.” Someone ignites fireworks behind his irises, the rutilant skies of the fourth of July and the Chinese New Year pressing up against the chocolate films. “You see the berry-bogs are flooded and frozen over during the winters. To protect the crop from pests, injury and stuff." 

He lets go of San and gives him a slight smack on the head. "You're like that, too. You go cold to protect the ones you love.” Then he shrugs to emphasize his point. “So San-berry."

San's jaw goes slack and he lets out an incredulous laugh to revive it. "Really?" He asks. 

Mingi rolls his eyes. "No. I'm a compulsive liar. Now get back to work."

San snorts as he brings the notepad back to his lap. The scratching of pencil against paper returns to curb the room's stillness. He can't help the smile that takes over his face once in a while. 

_San-berry_

___

San's mother finds Mingi a therapist, a fifty year old Jeju man with a modest office outside of town that he shares with a law associate. 

Wooyoung drives him there sometimes, but the boy mostly insists on taking a bus for his appointments every Wednesday and Saturday. 

There are still week-long absences from school that are spent amidst unwashed blankets, burgundy curtains blocking the Sun from hitting his bedroom walls as empty eyes stare unseeingly at the Pororo clock by his pillow. But San finds no new scars breaking the alabaster flow of skin on his forearms, standing out like misplaced veins. 

_And that's good_ , he thinks. 

_That's good_. 

***

There's a low thrum of bubbles on a suicide mission coming from a copper pot placed lopsidedly on the back burner. San stands before the oil-stained stove, staring unseeingly at the chip of paint hanging loose on the cucumber-green wall before him. Wooden ladle in hand, thoughts light years away, in the stone studded corridors of colleges he's not sure he wants to attend. He's making kimchi-jiggae for dinner. 

He adds the bowl of unevenly chopped garlic into the searing oil, noisily scratching the steel bottom to get all the little bits out. 

_Do I even want a degree? Why do I not have it all figured out? Why does it feel like a crime to not know everything?_

He adds the blush pink chicken, stirs it with a lazy hand and thinks about how we live our lives through quotes. _Life is now_ had made so much sense to him a week ago, now it puts his skin on low heat. _This too shall pass_ , in this moment of quiet chaos, brings him comfort, but if the same saying were to invade his thoughts in whispered moments of shared solitude when his skin familiarizes itself with the creases on Wooyoung’s shirt he’d be terrified to the point of trembles.

He smiles as he concludes _, I'm tired_. A different type of tired, not the kind that strains your bones. The one where he's okay, but not really, where he can move mountains but can't get out of bed. 

He empties a mounded spoon of gochujang into the stone frying pan before tossing it into the sink. Then he remembers, delayed instincts twisting his features into a grimace, that he's supposed to add the gochugara after this. He's about to reach out for the spoon and rinse it when lithe arms take over his waist and haul him up until his feet are meagre inches off the floor. He squeals as he's set down. 

"Bastard. You'll make my heart stop someday." He barks. 

An irking set of hyena giggles makes him turn his head in a half-hearted glare. He watches sideways as Wooyoung sticks his button nose up, sniffing the hot air that wafts above the stone counter. 

"Smells delicious." He praises.

"Stop drooling over the food. Close your mouth."

He grins. Presses his lips against the collar of San's shirt.

"I got in, Sannie." He says in a single breath, voice excited, as if the words have ripped some seams on their way out. 

_In where?_ Offers San's mind helpfully. 

And then, " _The_ university?" He asks the mop of sprite green hair dusted over his shoulder. 

Wooyoung nods, lone hand snaking up his torso before coming to rest over his right nipple. San bounces as he turns around in the embrace, flinging his arms around the other's neck in a back-arching hug. 

"I'm so happy for you." He gushes. "So, so proud." 

Wooyoung smiles as San kisses him, fast and discontinuous, hands moving up to squish his cheeks so his pout moves deeper into his mouth. 

"You deserve it, Young-ah." He declares against the boy's lips. "You deserve every bit of it."

Wooyoung huffs as he hoists him up, quietly sliding his own feet under San's, until the boy stands a whole head above him. He starts swaying them from side to side, bodies moving like a pair of braids in a stream, loose and directionless.

He looks up at San with heavy eyes, the corners of his lips dragging his lids down with their weight. “I’m scared of leaving you behind, San-ah.” He speaks and San sees the words more on his face than he hears it out of his mouth.

He frowns as he adjusts his posture, rearranging his limbs the slightest bit so as to not put as much pressure on Wooyoung’s slipper-clad feet. “Is that what you’re doing? Leaving me behind?”

Wooyoung shakes his head and looks at San with washed-out frustration. “Not like that. I’m just…scared. What if things change and- people change, right? What if you don’t feel like-there’s someone new and- obviously, we won’t see each other as often. We can’t touch and-”

“Are you afraid that I’ll cheat on you?” San asks. He wants to laugh, hysterically, maybe even pull a couple of his hair strands out. But he holds it back, stuffing the tremors behind an unstable smile.

“No.” Wooyoung whines, now visibly annoyed.

“That you’ll cheat on me, then?”

“Never.”

San watches his face for a few silent seconds, gaze wandering across midnight eyes and spindly eyebrows that can’t seem to stay away from each other today.

_What age do you have to reach before death falls into step with you? Before the thought of losing your loved ones is no longer a jagged line that splits your horizon but a smelly neighbour next door who won’t stop remodelling their shack?_

_What age before you start crying in front of your study desk because all the years behind you have claimed no lives, so you don’t really know what it’s like to live with a part of yourself missing?_

“You think it’ll be better if we break up now.” States San.

Wooyoung sighs. “No.” He says. “But I think smarter people would think that.”

San wonders if he wants to disagree with that. _Maybe not_ , he concludes, _maybe later_.

He settles to reply with a slack, “Good thing we’re dumb, then.”

Wooyoung smiles at that, a tired lilt of lips that only lifts one side of his face. He nods.

San moves closer, winding his arms around the boy’s neck, lips pressed against the flap of his ear. 

"Stir the chicken, Young-ah.” He sighs. “I don't feel like moving."

***

Wooyoung reads real slow, almost a word per second. San's fingers grow tired when he holds a lengthy meme up to the boy's face or a book under his nose to let him read a passage or a sentence that has intrigued him. It is in clear-bordered contrast with the way Mingi simply glances at whatever is being presented to him and starts laughing or frowning (or even grimacing in some cases) within seconds in accordance to the content. 

San likes watching him, when the phone screen lights up the higher planes of his face, and his irises move from one corner of his socket to the other, almost as if his gaze has to drag itself physically over the edges of the alphabets.

San likes the way Wooyoung reads, because, for once, someone is not in a hurry to reach the end of his sentences.

***

Wooyoung's mother passes away when he's nineteen.

She goes out to get art supplies for the toddlers in her kindergarten. It's late in December and it’s been snowing all month. The roads are too slick.

___

San finds the boy amidst a sea of cardboard boxes, eyes bloodshot and snot running down his philtrum, he was supposed to move away for college the next day. He pulls him against his chest and holds him tight, rubbing large circles into his back.

"I was going to install the snow-breakers on her tires before I left." Comes the shaky words from the breaking boy in his arms and San can't help the tears that leave his eyes. "She was out of the house before I even woke up, San."

His own name sounds so alien as it comes out of Wooyoung's mouth. He's never heard the word drenched in such sorrow before, it twists the sound into something abominable, something he never wants to hear in his life again.

"I'm sorry, baby." He whispers, because like the thousands of people before him that might have faced this situation, he doesn't know what else to say. Everything, including silence, would be the wrong thing to go with. "I'm so sorry."

The digital clock by Wooyoung's bed, that he must have forgotten to pack, ticks the seconds out of their grasp and he holds the sobbing boy against himself, hoping to absorb the pain out of his skin, crying a little more when that doesn't happen.

He holds Wooyoung's hand throughout the funeral service, but he might as well have been holding onto a block of concrete. The boy looks straight ahead, unseeing, and San can almost feel the bubble thickening around his frame, pushing him away by indiscernible inches.

But he never loosens his grip, slipping his fingers through Wooyoung's with determination so fierce it makes him look pathetic. The younger boy turns to give him a small smile, it looks bleak and warped, so distorted that it sends a chill down San's spine.

He finds himself wishing that the boy had never turned around.

***

Wooyoung decides to leave for college three weeks later.

He doesn't want to. But his father stands at their kitchen counter and glares at his slouched form on the sofa. In the weak light of their living room he looks like even lesser of a man than Wooyoung has always known him to be.

The sight brings back all the unwelcome memories of his mother's crying face, the ever present bags under her eyes and the way her hands always trembled a bit whenever Wooyoung held them. He thinks of his father's set jaw as he brought a different woman home each month, covered in a nauseating cloud of alcohol stench and how the man spent all his weekdays dozing over the same sofa that he's sitting on, not moving a single finger as his mother worked herself down to the ground.

"Wooyoung?" The old man calls, voice still filled with the same kind of arrogance. Wooyoung wants to throw a lamp at his head.

"You have to go to college.” He continues when he doesn't get a reply. "You can't waste your life away like this."

"Like you, you mean." Wooyoung snaps, lifting his head up to glare at him. "I can't waste my life away like you."

He watches the man swallow and look down at the set of china plates before him. He nods slowly before speaking again.

"She would've wanted you to go." He says and Wooyoung hates that he feels bad about how defeated the man sounds. He tries to shake the feeling out of his head.

"She always wanted you to leave the town. Go out and make a place for yourself in the world. She wouldn't want to see you like this."

Wooyoung scoffs as he gets up to his feet. "She wouldn't want to see me turn into you." He says before walking out of the house.

___

His father drives him to the airport two days later. San sits with him in the backseat, face buried in his neck, their hands resting interlaced in his lap. He gives the man a curt nod before he drags his luggage and San into the Airport, not bothering to look back as they walk in through the automatic doors.

There's half an hour left till his boarding time and they play video games on his phone to while the minutes away. San wraps an arm around his shoulder and presses a kiss to his cheek whenever he wins. It makes him wish that he had spent more time in the morning properly making out with the boy, paying unfaltering attention to his lips instead of worrying about what he did or didn't pack.

When the announcement of his flight is made they stand up haltingly and make their way over to the check-in area. Wooyoung bites his lip as they both gaze down at their intertwined hands, refusing to look up and risk the other seeing the tears that they're so desperately trying to hold back.

Wooyoung clears his throat, it sounds unwanted, but San lets it slide.

"Will you be my boyfriend, San?" He asks.

San looks up and laughs despite himself. "That's actually really lame." He comments, rubbing the back of his hand against his wet cheek.

Wooyoung shrugs and his tears fall out, too, and slide by the bridge of his nose. San wants to kiss them away from his face. " _I'm_ actually really lame. So do you want to date me or not?"

"You don't really have great timing now, do you?"

"You see I'm known for other strengths."

"Like what?"

"You'll find out if you agree to date me."

"You could've asked-"

"Just shut up and be my boyfriend, Choi San."

San chuckles at his scowling face before throwing his arms around his neck and drawing him closer. "Yes, I'll be your boyfriend, you noob. I've seen you naked and now I have to take responsibility."

"That was one time and you didn't have the decency to knock." Wooyoung whines.

San smacks his forehead. "Shut up and kiss me. God knows when we'll get to again."

They kiss. It is too short but it conveys their goodbyes better than words. San can still feel it on his lips as he's being driven back home.

***

San goes to the college in their town to study Agriculture. Mingi enters a Dance Academy three hours away. He helps the tall boy move out.

“I’ll miss you, San-berry. More than Bites.”

“More than Bites? That’s huge.”

Mingi smiles as he reaches his arms out to take the brown box of toiletries from San, then he leans over to brush his nose against the shorter boy’s.

“It’s true.”

***

When San goes to the movies with his new friends and he finds his hands empty, no fingers threaded through his own and no head resting against his shoulder halfway through the boring flick, he finds himself craving a certain brown-haired boy with a box smile.

He sips, irritated, at his can of Coke until he hears the harsh hiss of the liquid bottoming out.

He’s paid real money to come watch this movie for god’s sake! So he better pay attention instead of thinking about fools who start snoring in full theatres.

***

San sits cross-legged in the square of light that his laptop screen throws onto his bed. A digital Wooyoung is walking through the hallways of his dorm in a black hoodie.

"Botox is actually so fucking dangerous, San. Like it can legit kill you, flat out, if you get the dosage wrong." He is yapping away excitedly. San melts into a sleeping position and watches the boy move around like an idiot with a fond smile on his face.

Wooyoung stops to smile sheepishly at the screen. "Are you sleepy? Am I boring you?"

San shakes his head. "Your voice." He says, reaching out to touch the virtual Wooyoung's cheek. "I could spend lifetimes listening to it."

Wooyoung pretends to gag. "That's like so gay, San."

" _I'm_ like so gay, Wooyoung."

"What turned you this sappy?"

"Seeing you naked."

"That was one time-"

"And I didn't knock, yes I know, spare me the details."

Wooyoung blows a raspberry at him and San chuckles.

"I miss you."

"I can't wait for fall. I'll teleport home if I can."

San falls asleep ten minutes later when Wooyoung is talking about the librarian who he thinks is Eddie Redmayne's distant cousin. The boy's soft snores stops his gush of words and he almost coos at the screen when he turns around. San's lips are in a pout and the boy is holding onto his plushie so tight it's almost comical.

Wooyoung tiptoes back to his room, aggressively pushing his forefinger against his lips whenever someone makes so much as a breathing sound in the hallway, and places his phone on the table, getting it to stand upright against a paperweight.

He washes his face and changes into his pyjamas. When he takes his phone to bed San is still fast asleep, this time with a hand thrown over his face and his mouth slightly parted. Wooyoung leans in to kiss the screen and resists the urge to crush the phone due to how fervent he feels about the dozing figure on the other side.

"Goodnight, baby." He whispers before reluctantly hanging up.

He leaves him a text so that San knows he isn't mad that he fell asleep on him.

Wooyoung (01:45 AM) : You sound like a tractor when you snore. Good morning, ugly.

***

San's phone buzzes in his pocket when he's rushing to the cafeteria during his lunch break. It's a text from Wooyoung with an attached image of a snowy mountain range set against a cerulean sky.

Wooyoung (12:47 PM) : You're in every view I see.

San's heart melts into his shoes and he's three seconds away from bawling his eyes out at the stupid, cliché, overused pick-up line.

Later in the day, when he's out with a friend to grab some ice cream, he snaps a picture of a dog that sits licking its balls on the sidewalk and sends it to Wooyoung.

His red-haired friend stands howling with laughter in the background and the pet's owner gives them a dirty look from inside the shop.

San (4:50 PM) : So are you.

***

San is at the supermarket, wandering through the aisles as he looks for the cereal his mother asked him to buy when a call of his name makes him pivot on his heels. He turns around and immediately wishes that he hadn't. Standing by the grocery counter is Wooyoung's dad, a short man in his late fifties who looks like the last person someone would pick out of a lineup as his boyfriend's father.

He plasters on a smile as he approaches the man and bows. "Ah, Mr. Jung. Getting back from work?" He asks, glancing at the dusty combat boots on his feet.

"Yes.” Replies the man. “Realized I had run out of rice this morning." He gestures at a bag of the cereal in his basket.

"Ah." Is all San can say. He pulls the sleeve of his shirt out of the jacket he's wearing as a heavy moment of silence passes over.

"How are you, Sannie?" Asks Mr. Jung as San moves to the side to let a woman with a trolley pass by. "You don't drop by nowadays."

"I've been busy..."

The man nods as he lets out a small laugh, his goatee bobbing up and down with the movement. "That's what my boy tells me too."

"Yeah." San offers, smiling as he scratches the back of his ear.

"Say, San, why don't you come over for a cup of tea?"

San is embarrassingly fast to respond. "Oh, no, Mr. Jung. I really don't want to be a burden." He shakes his hand in front of his chest to emphasize his point.

The man reaches out to pat his forearm and leaves his hand there as he talks. "You wouldn't be." He ushers San towards the line of people waiting to get their items billed. "Let’s go."

\---

San sits on the brown corduroy couch as Wooyoung's father makes tea. He looks at the small collection of photographs that sit atop the table on his side. There's one of him and Wooyoung, a small frame with one side chipped off, from the year their school took them to a snow valley for a trip. He doesn't recall who shot it but quietly applauds them for the skill of capturing the beauty in the moment where Wooyoung is halfway through an eye-roll in response to something brilliant that San must have said.

"Here."

San jerks in his seat at the sudden voice, he hadn't heard Mr Jung come in. He takes the cup of tea handed to him with a slight bow and sips on it as the man slides into the chair before him.

"Never realized how big the house was." Mr. Jung says, letting his eyes wander around the living room.

Their house is a modest two-storey building, barely bigger than San's own one, but he understands what the man is talking about.

"Absence does that to spaces." He doesn't mean to sound as curt as he does.

"Right." The man agrees. He hasn't touched his cup since he brought them in. "You've always been too smart, San. I suppose it rubbed off on Wooyoung, too."

"Wooyoung is smarter than me." He says quickly, sounding braver than he feels. "Always has been."

There is an ounce of surprise that registers on the man's face. The look of someone who has realized that there is a lot more to the situation in hand than they are aware of.

"I didn't mean it that way. I'm sorry."

When the man hangs his head the fluorescent above casts long shadows on his face and San realizes where Wooyoung got his shame from.

"Does he call you often?" His eyes are eager as he looks up at San. "How is he?"

"He's alright." San answers, voice softening at the pleasant change of topic. "He likes it there. Even made a lot of friends."

"He doesn't regret leaving?"

San shakes his head. _Why would he?_

"He's happy there, sir."

"That's good." He says. "I just wish that sometimes he's happy enough to call me."

San doesn't say anything, biting back the acid that threatens to wash out of his tongue. He takes a sip of his tea and realizes that it has gone cold. He decides that he likes it better this way.

Mr. Jung studies his face for a second, San wonders what he finds.

"I know that I don't get to ask that of him." He states. And then with his gaze cast down at his feet, "I suppose he's told you about the women."

San doesn't mean to scoff, but he fails to hold it back. It wasn't Wooyoung that told him about the women, it was the rest of the town. In all fairness, Wooyoung never even uttered a single word about the matter, San simply understood it whenever the boy's hold around his waist got tighter when he was sleeping.

"I never meant to do it." Says the man. "I never went out a single time hoping that I'd come back home with a stranger. Not even when I had the worst fights with his mother."

San sets his half-empty cup down and places his elbows over his knees.

"I knew her all my life. Even before she was born. When I married her at twenty five... It was inevitable." When he smiles, Mr. Jung loses a few years right before San's eyes. "I go to school at five, get a license at sixteen and get married to Dahee when I'm an adult. I never questioned it.”

A snort. San squirms in his seat. “But my father was the kind of poor that forces you out of school at fifteen. I was working three jobs by the time adolescence was even completely done with me.”

He pauses to shake his head at the coffee table, his face impassive. "I never had a childhood, San. And when you get married you're forced to grow up all over again."

San wonders why he's even sitting here, painfully holding himself back as the lunatic before him tries to justify his affairs. But it doesn't feel right to walk out on any aspect of Wooyoung's life.

So he waits for the man to shut up so that he can bid his polite goodbyes and leave the place but his prayers go unanswered as Mr. Jung continues the sour monologue with a defeated look on his face.

"I'm not trying to tell you that Dahee was a burden. She wasn't. If anything she was a pillar that held up my life. She raised me more than my parents ever did, San."

San straightens at the mention of his name. But even then he's not sure that it is him that the man is talking to.

"All I'm saying is that I was a good father, a good man. Once. Before everything." He scratches at the skin on his fingers, and San notices that his breathing seems to have gotten more laborious than before. "If only I'd had a better star-"

"What are you trying to tell me, Sir?" San cuts him, his tone crude. Only this time it's intentional.

Mr. Jung's head snaps up and there are tears in his eyes that look like they don't belong in his face. He mulls for a while before answering, gaze never leaving the boy before him.

"That if I had to do it all over again, all my choices would be different."

San's smile is sardonic. "But you _can't_. And, believe it or not, it somehow does not suffice to be a good father _once_." He reaches up to place his fingers against his temple. He can feel the rising thrum beneath his skin there.

"And a child is not a choice. My boyfriend's life is not a set of dominos that you can rearrange the way you want. And his mother was more than a mere plot inconvenience in the grandeur of your existence.” He takes a deep breath before he continues. “So stop fooling yourself that you weren't rich enough to be a good husband."

San laughs at how eloquent rage makes him. He'd char a flower if he touched it now.

"So you either own up, apologize and salvage whatever is left of your relationship with him. Or you let him go and be that good man that you were forced long ago not to be."

He rises to his feet and the edge of the couch smacks against his calf. Mr Jung looks at him as he gathers the grocery bags into his hands. San sees the side of his jaw pulsing as he struggles to hook an emotion between anger and helplessness. Yet another trait that he shares with his son.

"It's not as easy as you think it is. You’re young, you don’t know what it’s like." Says the man and what surprises San more than words themselves is the fact that he looks like he actually believes them.

"At least you still have a chance to make it right with him." He tells him as he begins to stride towards the main door. "Don't wait until the ice slips from under his tyre, too, sir."

There are tears in his eyes by the time he closes the gate behind him, the acrid taste of his parting words making his tongue go numb. He fishes his phone out of his pants pocket and dials the first number in his call log.

It takes him three rings too long to answer but Wooyoung speaks like he's been waiting by his phone all day.

"Hey, San." He says, out of breath like always, as if he runs a marathon right before each of San's calls.

Or maybe it is his heart that does. _Same difference_ , San decides.

"Hey."

"I was hoping I'd get to hear your disgusting voice this evening."

San laughs out loud, barely registering the fact that he's out on a street with people all around him. Some even stoic enough to grimace at the sound that disturbed the serenity of their evening stroll.

San laughs as Wooyoung talks and the miles lose meaning. The oceans turn into mere pages separating the maps in an atlas.

San laughs as Wooyoung talks. And life doesn't seem as unfair as it did before he placed the call.

San laughs as Wooyoung talks. And everything is okay.

***

Fall is here in a heartbeat, but takes an eternity to arrive. Wooyoung catches the first flight home and his legs won't stop bouncing throughout the travel. He incessantly apologizes to the burly passenger on his side, who assures him that it's alright and asks him if he's okay.

"I'm going home to see my boy."

The kind-faced man goes wide eyed. "You have a son?"

Wooyoung shakes his head and chuckles. "My boyfriend."

"Ah." The man says as he nods. "That's cute."

Wooyoung smiles as he looks away to stare out the window, at the world beneath him that looks so pretty it seems fake.

"My boyfriend." He repeats, the word rolling off his tongue like a warm stick of butter.

He doesn't bother going to his place when he gets there, and simply hauls his luggage over to San's house and is greeted by his mother when he knocks on the door.

"Wooyoung-ie!" She coos, gathering him against her bosom.

She stills smells like coffee and aloe-vera bath gel. It reminds him of the many times she made cookies and warm milk for him when he came running to their house in the middle of the night because the angry yells coming from his own living room had gotten too loud.

"San's upstairs getting ready." She tells him as she takes his bag and places it by the door. "He was planning on going to see you at your place."

Wooyoung kisses her on the cheek before he moves to rush up the stairs.

"Wash up and come down for breakfast." She calls and he gives her a thumbs-up over his head.

He pauses when he reaches San's door, and tries to fix his now midnight-blue hair that is all over the place. When he realizes that it's a lost cause he is about to rap his knuckles against the door but is surprised when it's thrown open and a half-naked San comes into picture. He isn't given any time to appreciate the delicious view before him as he's pulled into the kind of hug that forces him to arch his back.

"Why didn't you tell me you were coming?" San asks as he loosens his grip around his waist, only to move in and smother his face with wet smooches.

"Because some human beings still appreciate surprises."

"I missed you."

"Yeah, I can see that." Wooyoung states, gaze locked on San's exposed chest. "You look about ready for a blowjob." 

San rolls his eyes and swats him on the shoulder before turning around and ambling over to his cupboard to fetch a shirt. He pulls the plain white piece over his head as he speaks. "I just got out of the shower. I had no ulterior motives."

"Sad." Wooyoung comments with a shrug. "Because I did."

"Come here and kiss me properly, you fool." San chides and Wooyoung strides over to do as he's told.

His hands slide down San's back and settles against the sigmoid of his bottom as he lets his tongue loose in the boy's mouth, months of withheld passion making its presence known in the way San pulls on the hair at the back of his head.

"Wooyoung. San." They hear San's mother bellow from downstairs and they part for a well-deserved gulp of air. "Come down for breakfast."

Wooyoung nips on his bottom lip and San jumps back a little in surprise.

"Sss." He pulls in a breath through his teeth and gently nudges Wooyoung's shoulder. "Nasty."

The boy simply smirks before letting go of San and heading over to his bathroom.

"I'll wash up and be back in a second." He calls over his shoulder. "Put some pants on, Tom Cruise."

"Aye, aye, Captain."

___

There is something about Wooyoung that San finds unsettling. It keeps him on the edge of his seat throughout dinner. Maybe it's the way the sleeve of his shirt bulges whenever he moves, it's never done that before. Or maybe it's the way he scrawls a thumb along his jawline through the pointless conversations, answering his mother with a captivating smile and a flick of his eyebrows, or talking to his dad about his new interest in gardening.

San watches, mouth slightly agape, the food that’s in there long forgotten, as Wooyoung compliments his sister on her new top and tells her that lavender suits her skin tone, she should wear it more often.

There is something about this Wooyoung. Something that the outside air has rearranged, something that San's shitty laptop screen has not done any justice to. It causes all the warmth in his body to flow south.

San places his hand over Wooyoung's thigh below the table and if it sparks any reaction in the boy he does a good job of hiding it. His Adam’s apple bobs once, but San only notices that because he's sitting too close.

Their meals are downed with unnecessary urgency after that and they excise themselves from the table before the others are finished. San thinks he sees his sister smirk around her spoon of mashed potatoes but he’s smarter than giving her the satisfaction of an irked reaction.

___

"Young-ah?" 

"Hmm?"

"What are you doing tomorrow?"

He looks at him with a confused frown. " _We_ are going out with Mingi, because he’s back on a break, too, right? Maybe catch a movie, then I have some letters to-"

"Fuck me?"

"Huh?" 

"Since you'll be so busy we might as well get it over with now, right?"

"Is this how you usually ask for sex?" 

"No, I sacrifice a goat first. But we can overlook that for now. Get on top, please." He says, emphasising the urgency with a kiss to Wooyoung’s neck.

___

They make love for the first time, and San finds out that he was right about the muscles in Wooyoung's arms. They bulge around the small of his back when the blue-haired boy lifts him off the floor. In fact, to his pleasant surprise, he finds more of those rigid muscles everywhere else, going liquid wherever they brush against his own gypsum skin. It drives him insane that he's even allowed to touch them.

They laugh as they fumble through the maneuvers, sloppy and unfocused. San chuckles when the cold lube is pressed against his entrance and Wooyoung guffaws when he pushes into the boy for the first time.

"Is this what it's all about? Fuck, you’re god, San."

Giggles give way to sounds more heavy, the kind that take more breath to be made, and broken calls of garbled names that dissipates at the tip of their tongues and flow into the other's mouth. They tremble when they reach their climaxes, and Wooyoung collapses against San's chest, inexperience forcing the stamina out of his limbs.

"Don't flirt with my sister, loser." San reprimands as he kisses his damp forehead.

"I just saw my friends doing it. Thought I should give it a try."

"That's so gross, you're fucking her brother."

"Well, in my defense, until a few minutes ago I wasn't actually doing that."

"Still. Don't. Not with her."

Wooyoung places his chin over the dip in San’s neck and looks into his eyes. "Fine." He acquiesces. "I won't."

"Or with anyone."

"No face is as terrifying as yours to make me want to flirt."

"Good."

___

It's three in the morning and San is running a hand through Wooyoung's hair.

"Visit your father tomorrow."

"What?"

"He's been good, Wooyoung. He found a job at the quarry. Doesn't drink. He even comes over sometimes, to buy chrysanthemums from my father’s shop, he says he likes keeping them in the car. I think he comes to see me. Because he misses you."

"Bullshit. He probably gets them for his girlfriends."

"I'm serious. Just go see him once."

"Let's sleep. I want to sleep. Please."

___

They meet Mingi the next day at the mall. He brings his boyfriend Yunho along. He's bigger than Mingi, San didn't think that was possible, and laughs all the time and keeps reaching out to hold the boy’s hand. Mingi reddens, but never pulls away. He goes to the same school and has the kind of smile that makes people want to tell him things that they've never put into words before.

Wooyoung likes him almost immediately.

They decide to watch a horror flick after a fifteen minute discussion that involves everyone speaking over each other. Wooyoung tells San that it's okay if he wants to hold hands during the bad scenes, he won't let anyone know how big of a chicken he is. San laughs and nods and tells him that he's grateful.

Mingi finds Wooyoung buried in San's jacket by the time the end credits are rolling. He laughs only for the rest of the day out of courtesy.

___

There's a spot on Wooyoung's thigh, about three inches below his pelvis, where a long scar splits his skin like a dagger mark. It's a pinkish elevation that he earned due to a knife mishap when he was four. 

A slow Wednesday afternoon finds San on his knees in his bedroom. He diligently sucks a vermillion state map onto the skin below the scar. He doesn't give it a second thought, being more focused on the expression on Wooyoung's face, around the bandanna that has been tied around his mouth to keep the sultry moans from slipping out.

But he notices the way Wooyoung eyes the mark that night when they're getting ready for bed. The thing is barely visible under the hem of the boxers he's wearing, but San thinks he sees the boy smile at it for a moment before he snaps his head up and asks him to turn off the light and get to bed you loser. 

When they go out to grab a pizza with Mingi and Yunho two days later, he sees the way the boy's fingers keep stroking that spot in his lap. He chuckles quietly into the napkin that he brings to his face to wipe off the crust crumbs and wonders if Wooyoung is even aware of how obscene his actions are looking right about now. He thinks he sees Mingi steal a sidelong glance before his eyes dart away to the other side of the restaurant.

(He'll receive a text later that night: San? Was I high on depression meds or was your starved boyfriend feeling himself up in the middle of that pg-13 pizza place?) 

He catches him again a week later, when the boy is sat on the edge of his bed, unclothed from the waist down, gazing down wistfully at the now blush-pink mark on his leg. He looks up at San, who is standing by his book shelf, cleaning his fingers with a wet napkin, and his eyes are big and honest, the corner of his lips turned down. 

_It’s fading._

San snorts at the pretty sight. "Like it that much?" He asks, as he sets the pack of tissues down and walks over to Wooyoung. 

He places his arms over the boy's shoulders and links his fingers behind his neck. 

"It feels nice." Wooyoung tells him, delicately running his hand over the said spot as he speaks. "Like you took something painful and made it pretty."

For a moment San doesn't react, he continues to silently gaze down at the boy on his bed, and all he can think is _Will the world ruin you if I let you go out of my sight?_

_I'll lock you up in a tower if I get to marry you someday_.

Then he leans down to kiss his forehead, and the wet spot goes cold when he moves his lips away. Then gets down to his knees for the second time that day and works the colour back into the hickey, until Wooyoung's face is akin to that of a child on a Christmas morning. 

He giggles as he passes the boy his pants from where it had been discarded on the floor a half hour ago.

_I'll make sure there isn't even a window in that tower of yours_.

___

Wooyoung never visits his father. He leaves after three weeks.

***

"Wooyoung, what do you call them?"

"What?"

"The fake avocados."

"Huh?"

"The ones that wear jackets."

"What?"

"They're not pregnant."

"Ba-bananas?"

"No. They're fat."

"Kiwi?"

"Yeah, those. Thank you, baby. "

“Aren’t you studying agriculture?”

“Shut up.”

***

San flies in an airplane for the first time when he's twenty-one. He wraps an iron nail in his socks before packing them and kisses his mother's cheek as he's about to leave.

"Have fun with your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend."

She tilts her head to the side and purses her lips. "What is he, then?"

_He's everything._

"An idiot."

***

He's drenched in sweat, exhausted and there's a painful cramp in the side of his neck by the end of the seven hour flight. He hails a taxi and is knocking on Wooyoung's dorm room door a half hour later. It's unlocked.

The boy on the other side has an undercut with red highlights.

And pale arms around his body, one around his neck and one grasping his waist. Back arched over a porcelain doll of a girl, faces so close only half a breath can pass through the gap.

San's kit-bag falls to the floor first. Then that stupid muscle in his chest follows suit.

Two sets of eyes are peering at him, he looks for it but sees no apology in either of them.

The color in Wooyoung's hair bleeds out, much like that time they rode in his car for the first time. Except only San can see it this time, only he notices the world going red.

___

And then there is shouting, monstrous yells that tear at his eardrums as a pair of sturdy arms encircle his waist and lift him off the floor.

He knows that perfume only too well.

"Happy birthday,Sannie!"

Mingi.

He watches Wooyoung detach himself from the girl and walk towards him with a smirk on his face. Mingi sets him down as Yunho comes around with a camera. San glares into the lens.

"It was all Mingi's idea." Yunho says, throwing an arm up in defense. "Tear his limbs if you must."

He turns to scowl at his best friend, who has suddenly found a deep interest in Wooyoung's bookshelf.

"Hey, baby." Is the whisper he hears before he's collected into the kind of embrace that make his limbs go slack.

"But they dropped me off at the Airport." He complains into Wooyoung's chest and feels his giggle against his cheek.

"They also own a private plane."

He glances at the girl who comes up behind Wooyoung. Her grin is too sweet and open for him to continue scowling. So he melts and throws her a smile. She ruffles his hair.

"I wanted to surprise you." He says, looking up at his boyfriend.

"You wanted to surprise me on _your_ birthday?" Wooyoung rubs his nose against his.

"Yeah." He admits, a pout pulls his bottom lip out. "It would've been better than this stupid prank."

"You looked about ready to ugly cry." Mingi calls and skilfully dodges the smack that is aimed at him.

Wooyoung pulls him in for a kiss and he breathes for the first time in months.

"Happy birthday, Haku-San. I'm so glad you're here."

***

They dine at the kind of restaurant that makes San feel like a discarded plastic bottle on the sidewalk, and they've only spoken to the maître d’hôtel so far. He doesn't want to think about what's waiting for him inside. The black turtleneck and blue jeans he wears seem inadequate and he feels naked where he stands under the hulking chandelier in the lobby.

But as they are led in through the hand-painted double-glass doors and Wooyoung slips an arm around the crook of his elbow his worries shrink in size; not forgotten but pushed significantly to the back of his head.

They place their orders and San points at the menu with a sheepish smile, fingers hovering around the names of the dishes he can't pronounce. The short waiter who looks like he belongs somewhere in Al Pacino's family tree leans over his shoulder and nods as he enters the names into the iPad he's holding.

The boy leaves and San looks up to find Wooyoung gazing at him, his eyes mellow and doting. "You okay?" He asks, placing his hand over San's on the table.

Somehow he looks at home in that high-backed wooden chair. His skin glows in the soft orange light of the restaurant and San thinks of royalty. And of art. Of the Starry Night and the Last Supper, of Las Meninas and The Scream and he wonders why he's allowed to look at and perceive this masterpiece for free.

"Top-notch." San smiles as he answers and turns his palm up so that Wooyoung can hold it properly. "But what if we run short on cash?"

He turns around to look unsurely at the collection of people scattered across the room and it reminds him of that one scene in Titanic. He feels like a bug again.

Wooyoung shakes his head. "I have it covered. You're not touching your wallet today."

"And how exactly do you have it covered?" San asks, throwing a scowl at his boyfriend. "This place looks like they wash plates in champagne."

"I robbed a bank last week." He says and San narrows his eyes at him. "Just trust me and enjoy it, Sannie. If I run out of cash later in the month I'll just ask you, okay? For now, just let it be."

San wants to protest but zips his mouth when he sees the frown on Wooyoung's face. It's the end of the conversation.

The waiter comes back a minute later, an expensive looking bottle nestled against his chest. San resists the urge to ask him if he’s going to make them an offer they can’t refuse.

"This is a compliment by... Uh..." The waiter looks down at his palm, eyes focused on whatever is scrawled across the skin, and then back up at them. "Sir Yunho the bone-breaker and Sir Mingi of Princess Valley."

"White wine?" Wooyoung inquires, gazing curiously at the glazed surface of the green bottle.

The waiter shakes his head. "Champagne, sir." He answers and proceeds to pop the cork, making San giggle in fascination. "And I was asked to inform you that you are not allowed to pay back... Until it is in... Uh... Sexual favors."

Wooyoung smiles at the raging blush on the boy's cheek and thanks him once he's done filling their stalky glasses with the fizzy drink.

"To you, Haku-San." Wooyoung announces as they clink their glasses. "The embodiment of my fever dreams."

___

Wooyoung drags him to the stone amphitheater at his campus after dinner. He is drowsy and cranky due to the jet lag, but follows the boy wordlessly with only a few grunts that slip out here and there. A handful of students are lounging across the stone stairs flanking the large stage, they barely even lift their heads for a glance when the couple traipses down the steps hand in hand.

San laughs when Wooyoung twirls him in the middle of the concrete stage and is still giggling as the boy pulls him in closer until their heartbeats are aligned.

"I've always wanted to kiss you here." Wooyoung tells him, his eyes alight, little bonfires against the inky horizon.

"Ever since Hongjoong brought me over for the first time for his bass rehearsals. I've wanted to mush my face against your pretty one."

San turns around to glance at the jagged line of sycamore trees that flank the area on both sides. The stars look like crown jewels over the dense foliage and a fading spells of laughter and indecipherable chatter is heard from the students clustered at the stairs towards the top and San decides that, yes, it is indeed the kind of place that makes you want to steal someone's breath with your lips. Whether it is for murder or romantic purposes is left to the protagonist in question.

"And you’re doing what, exactly? Waiting for some divine sign to float down from the sky?"

Wooyoung lets out a little growl as he leans in closer, crossing his wrists behind San's back. He kisses the boy, chaste but doting, bottom lip busier than the upper one.

'I got my divine sign the day I met you." He says, grazing his forehead against San's. "It said look out, fifty years’ worth of your headache is here."

___

San tops in Wooyoung’s dorm room that night, fucking into the younger boy as his back slides up the mattress, his crown banging against the old headboard.

He leaves a hickey at the base of his neck, marking his skin for the first time where everyone else can see, and refuses to let Wooyoung wear a turtleneck to class.

***

There’s a plot of land that San plans on purchasing when he’s done with college. It's on the east side of the town, fifteen hundred hectares surrounding the Episcopal Church. A stream cuts through its hindquarters before it disappears into the woods flanking the field.

He'll cultivate oranges and build a cafe. He'll bake his own bread and the coffee will linger on his customers' tongues as they snuggle into their blankets at night.

Wooyoung will kiss his neck and distract him when he's closing up for the day.

He can see it, it's right behind his lids when he closes his eyes. His fingers tingle as they long to open the doors of his little building.

It'll be small and warm and he'll lay his heart on the counter each morning.

It'll be perfect.

___

The first bank he visits for a loan sends him a response a week later. They're sorry but his but his profile doesn't meet their requirements. They hope he finds better luck elsewhere.

___

San knows something is not right when he feels his mother gently shake his shoulder as she calls his name. She never steps into his room without knocking, not even in the morning to wake him up. It's one of her odd rules that he'll never understand.

He pokes his head out of his fuzzy blanket and sets his sleep crusted gaze on her. "What's wrong, Ma?"

She fixes his hair as an odd expression clouds her face. It looks like pity to him in his murky stupor, but he can't be sure, it is not a look that he's seen his mother wearing often.

"Your aunt called, Sannie." She tells him as he attempts to sit up straight against the pillows. "The land you were looking for sold out last night. The bidder was a foreigner and put out too much money. There was no saving it."

___

It's mid-afternoon and San is pacing around in his front yard when Wooyoung calls him.

"Hello, Sunshine."

The rare term of endearment doesn’t sit well with San.

"You say you're sorry once and I'm hanging up, Wooyoung."

He plucks out a few blades of grass with his toes and tosses them aside. Heavy clouds drift past the metal-grey sky and San regrets coming out without a jacket.

"I won't. I just called to ask you how you were doing."

"Horrible. Thank you."

He hears a sigh. There are tears in his eyes again, and he's too tired to even wipe them away.

"You know that it's not your fault right? You had no-"

"Nobody said it was."

"Yeah, and that's good. Because it's not." 

San rolls his eyes and huffs in annoyance. It causes a tear drop to spray away from his nose.

"What do you want, Wooyoung?"

"Nothing. I just thought you'd want to talk to me." Comes the halting reply.

"And I do."

"You sure? It doesn’t feel like you want to.”

San wants to throw the phone across the yard. He grits his teeth to hold himself back. "Surprise, baby. But not everything you feel is accurate."

"I just thought-"

"Of course you _thought_ so now it's supposed to be true. It doesn't always work that way, Wooyoung."

The line is silent for several weighted seconds. "You don't have to be this rude, San."

He wishes that the way his name sounds coming out of the boy's mouth, even from a thousand miles away, is enough to make him snap out of it. But that doesn't happen.

"I'll stop being rude if you stop being dense."

He can almost see the grimace that must be on Wooyoung's face. It chills his spine right up to his cranium.

It is his turn to sigh. The last ripples of thunder roll over from somewhere far away.

"San, you don't have to be like this, you know?" Wooyoung says, and San can hear the way his patience is being rolled out until it is no thicker than a layer of atoms. "I know you think it's cool because you saw it in the movies but there's a better way to deal with things."

San scoffs. "Of course. Everything I do is for the drama, Wooyoung.” His voice has gone up several octaves but he barely notices.

“What about this? Why don't you call me when you think that I'm real enough for you?"

Wooyoung laughs with no humor and the sound sets his hair on fire. "What are you even saying, San? Can you even hear yourself?"

San inhales, a long breath through his nose. "Wooyoung, I'm going to hang up before I ruin something important."

"Yeah, I think that'll be a good thing."

"Bye."

"I'll call you toni-"

The line goes dead.

___

The rain that night causes the town’s quarry to overflow. San watches the drops hammer against his window until dawn colors the world orange.

___

Wooyoung (07:53PM): Pick up my calls.

Wooyoung (07:57PM): San?

Wooyoung (11:35PM): Stop it, San.

San (11:40PM): Sorry, I just need some time. I'll call you when I feel better.

Wooyoung (11:42PM): Ok.

***

San takes up a third job, constantly dashing between the café and his classes. There are bags under his eyes the size of continents and his skin slowly puts on a sickly pallor.

He hasn’t called Wooyoung in a week.

___

It's three am and San is in Mingi's car again. He's just descended from the sunroof and the chilly wind that rearranged his hair has also let wild anthuriums bloom in his cheeks. The windows are rolled down and Joji is singing about darkness. Heartbreak is a hand's length away. 

"I guess I wanted it too bad, Mingi." Says San as he pulls one of his legs up to rest on the seat. Mingi doesn't even give him a side-eye when he gets soil on the leather surface. 

"I would've lost my mind if I'd actually gotten it." He continues. "So maybe this is for the best."

Mingi glances at him for a second before turning back to look out of the windshield. A smile tugs at his lips. It is the first time that San has spoken all night since he picked him up at his house. "You would've spent ages just weeding out that place." He observes. "You deserve something grander." 

"You're right. I deserve the best there is." His tongue feels loose and there's not a single drop of liquor in his system. 

An ocean sits outside his window, frothy waves charging up to the shore, untouched by the mortal woes that plague the air in this car. Its water is brown, the postcard turquoise long abandoned with the arrival of dusk, as if a large sepia filter has drained the world of all its colour. Even the orange streetlights seem more dead than they usually do. 

"I've delivered pizzas in the rain." San adds as the wind brings delicate showers of salt water to land on his cheeks. His tongue darts out to get a taste. "I don't even remember what eight am looks like because it's dawn by the time I sleep after studying."

"You've brushed your teeth in college when you were running late." Mingi offers with raised eyebrows. 

"Exactly." San acclaims as he swirls a finger around the head of the gearshift. "Someone gave me mouthwash once and told me that I was going to go far in life. And you know what? I believe them. How's Yunho doing?"

Mingi laughs at the sudden question. He places his hand over San's and shifts the gear. "He texted me a minute ago. Wanted to know if you're okay."

"Tell him that I'll make him next in command when I take over the world."

"Will do, sir."

"Or a courtesan. Whatever he's more comfortable with."

Mingi chuckles and his eyes become hyphens. "I'll let him know." He says. "I asked him if he'd meet my parents next weekend."

San's eyes go wide. "And?"

"I think he choked on his sandwich. But he hid it well." Mingi grins at the memory. "He said he'd be honoured. It was cute. His chest was up three inches the whole day."

San vibrates in his seat as he holds himself back from pulling Mingi into a hug. "I'm so happy for you, Geyser!" 

"Thank you." Mingi says as San leans over to smooch his cheek. "I'm just scared sometimes."

San frowns. "Why?"

Mingi bites the inside of his cheeks. "I don't know. Too much is going right. I can't help but be superstitious. Like he'll just pop out someday and I'll be forced to accept that this was all some wild dream."

"Bullshit." San offers. "Yunho would never hurt you."

Mingi rolls his eyes at that. "You know he will."

"Yeah, but, like, it's Yunho. He'll probably write you a sorry sonnet right after."

"You know that's not true."

San turns to throws him a scowl. They drive past an ice cream shop and for a few seconds the interior of the car is washed in pools of neon blue and yellow. 

"Maybe not." He says. "But why worry until you have to?"

"That's what I'm good at."

"Well, then get better at something else." San snaps. "My best friend is going to live an awesome gay life and you get to have no say in that."

He then reaches over to ruffle Mingi's hair. "You know you're the best, right?"

Mingi looks at him from the corner of his eyes. "Go tell that to your next in command."

San chortles at his pout. "Aww, feeling left out, are we?"

"Bullshit. I have my Wooyoung." Mingi admits. 

He doesn't notice the way San's smile falls at the sound of the name, he's busy manoeuvring the steering wheel. The rest of the ride is quiet, San opening his mouth only to let him know that they should probably head home now. 

___

Five am finds San amidst his quilt, soaking the fabric with tears that refuse to run dry. 

He is indeed happy for Mingi, as he tells himself over and over again until the syllables get jumbled. The boy deserves the whole world and then some. 

_I'll be fine, too._

_Just a little longer and I'll be so fine all this will make me laugh then._

_Just get through this week, that's all I have to do._

_And then I'll be okay._

___

The lighted screen of his phone jeers at him as his thumb hovers over the little green icon that’ll connect his call to Wooyoung. San feels shy, like he’s talking to him for the first time, almost as if he hasn’t obscenely stripped in front of the boy before.

But what overpowers the bashfulness is the guilt that gnaws at his collarbones. For the words that were jumbled by rage, the ones that came out so mangled that they were far from accurate.

And for the cowardice that dragged his hands away from the phone every time he tried to place the call before.

Wooyoung’s face is blank when he answers, a clean slate waiting to be marked accordingly to the words that San is about to say. He’s seen him like this before, only he was not on the receiving end all those times. And he had guessed right all along, Wooyoung’s indifference is more terrifying than his anger.

“Hey.” The sound is hollow, but San supposes that he deserves it.

He wastes no time. “I’m sorry.” He sits up straight on his bed, making sure that Wooyoung can see every inch of his face. It seems necessary.

Wooyoung smiles and nods at a dark-haired boy that passes by, he seems to be sitting in a class room. San stupidly cranes his neck to get a better look, Wooyoung never picks up when he’s in college, and retreats when the boy turns back to him.

“You don’t get to treat me like that.” He says. “It’s not fair.”

San pulls his knees close and crosses his arms across his chest. “I know. I’m really sorry.”

“How are you now?” His voice is so impassive, San indeed feels like he’s talking to a stranger.

“Dejected. And mildly sensual.”

That makes him chortle. San sighs at the sound.

“You want to talk about it?”

“Yeah, I’ll just go close the door if we’re taking our pants off.”

San makes a gesture of wanting to get up and Wooyoung covers his mouth to hide his laughter. He adores the way that his nose jiggles due to the movement.

“You know what I mean.” He says once he recovers.

“Later?” San offers and he nods. “How’s your day been?”

“Good.” He admits, looking away. He seems to be sitting by a window, the light makes him look like a movie still. “I went to the hospital on Monday.”

“Why?” There’s panic pouring out of his skin before he even registers it in his head. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Wooyoung says, shaking a hand in front of his face. “Just a really bad stomach ache, nothing serious.”

“Should I be concerned?”

“Would you comply if I asked you not to be?”

San shakes his head, a small smile on his lips. It makes Wooyoung laugh again.

“I’m fine. I promise. Just need to pop some pills for a while.”

“Ooh, sexy.”

“What’s sexy about medication?”

“You.”

Wooyoung snorts and looks into his camera with a raised eyebrow. “You want to face-time again when I get home, baby?”

San’s face heats up when he catches on to what he’s trying to imply. He nods haltingly.

“Good. Now will you tell me how you’re doing?”

“Won’t your lecturer come around?”

Wooyoung looks at what must be the classroom door and shakes his head. “Not for another half-hour, at least. I’ll cut class if I must.”

Then he looks back at San, rendering the miles between them obsolete. San can almost feel his warm hand over his thigh.

“Tell me, Haku-San.”

So he does.

***

He sees the building for the first time in a grainy picture tucked into the margin of a poorly arranged real estate website. He dashes down the stairs to his sister's room, his diaphragm billowing up to his throat. She's back from the States for the weekend.

Standing before the oak door that has a big embroidered S hung at its centre, he smooths down the front of his One-Piece shirt and tries to tame his unwashed hair. Nervous tics developed from years and years of Sit up straight, San, Don't slouch, Don't slurp your tea, Go wash the dishes, mom's alone in the kitchen. 

He knocks on the striped wood, movement softer than the slide of honey, and steps back. "Noona?" 

One Mississippi. 

The room stays still on the other side. 

Two-

"It's open. Come in, Sannie."

He turns the knob and steps into the small space. The olive green statement wall stands out among the caramel ones. There are no pictures hung up, no snapshots dangling from twine-ropes, except for a single glass-framed candid of his sister smiling down at his mother, arms wrapped in a pretzel embrace as they stand before the divine backdrop of Mount Fuji. 

"What's up, bubba?" She asks and San turns to look at her smiling face. Marble yellow gaze warm and open as it settles on his face. She's the only one who hasn't inherited the cinnamon-brown irises of the family. 

San's sister sits over the jade futon, knees drawn up to her chest as she reads a dog-eared novel the size of San's bicep. 

"Can I talk to you for a second?" He enquires from the doorway and she nods eagerly, patting the cushion on her side.

He pads over to take the seat. It's nearing two o'clock and the roads are dotted with toy-yellow buses carrying kindergarteners from all over the town.

"Tell me." She orders, stubby fingers reaching up to play with the midnight bangs that curtain his eyes. 

San starts speaking, slowly at first, stumbling over his words under her weighted gaze, the pressure akin to the one that might precede a quartet performance to three full galaxies. And then his tongue picks up pace, words crashing into their tail ends as he tells her about the site, the jobs that are melting his flesh and all the banks that shut their high-security doors in his face. He tells her about the ad he saw upstairs and how he thinks that it might be his only chance to salvage whatever is left of his would-be career. 

She is softened to pliancy by the time he's done rambling with bated breaths, her eyes liquefied to pools of amber as she holds his sobbing frame. 

"You have the number, bubba?" She asks as she retrieves her phone from the table before them. "The real estate agency's?"

San nods and recites the digits that he's already memorised, voice only barely quivering as she unconsciously pats his back. 

"I'll talk to them." She states as she presses the green button that'll connect her call to the agency. "We'll get through this, okay? You don't have to- Yes, hello?"

She rises from the seat and starts pacing around the moss-green carpet, eyes stern and her narrow jaw set as she speaks into the phone in short sentences, her queries precise and answers clear enough to wade through. 

She's never been one to waste others' time. 

She hangs up fifteen minutes later and tosses her phone onto her bed, the time-span in which San has lain in fifty different positions over the downy futon and fabricated about a thousand different scenarios amidst the soft overlaps of his brain. 

"There. You can go visit the site tomorrow.” She relays as she strides over to the half-open door. Her chocolate curls sway around the middle of her back as she moves, the charms on her anklet clinking with each step.

"I'm coming with you, obviously." She points to the end of the bed, where a black rucksack is lying over the quilt. "Reach into the front zip of my bag, you'll find a pack of tissues. Wipe your face, you can cry for better reasons. Once you're done come out to the kitchen and we'll help dad make dinner, okay?"

San nods haltingly as he processes the plethora of orders. Somehow, his head feels a lot lighter as it moves over his neck. 

"Okay, now scoot." She barks over her shoulder as she steps out. 

San notices that she closes the door behind her. It could have been out of habit but knowing her she is probably giving him a few necessary minutes to set his features before he can traipse back out of the room. 

***

She sits on the stone compound outside as San follows the real-estate agent around the establishment with the eagerness of a found puppy. It’s a tiny place, the space downstairs will eat at his pocket with Pac-man mouth to be remodelled. But there’s a little house on the first floor, with a mosaic balcony and sliding windows.

He finds his sister on her third cigarette of the day when he bounces out of the wooden doors with a bubble ballooning into a planet within his chest. She smiles, too, the ember tip sticking up with the lift of her lips.

_This is it._

_____

There are three notification tabs blinking on his phone screen when San looks down at it after an hour-long study session and about two-and-a-half cups of coffee.

One is an offer ad from a food-delivery service. San slides it out of the way.

The next one is a firm rectangle from his bank app, notifying him of a credit transfer of several thousand Wons.

A text message from his sister follows:

_Noona (04:45PM) :_ I thought you’d need the money. It’s from my third job. I have plenty to feed myself and dress well. So don’t cry into your pillow or anything. You owe me a favour, though. I love you.

***

San goes shopping. He buys new china and table mats and builds the counters by himself. Mingi comes over on a Thursday and they paint walls throughout the weekend. Wooyoung spends countless hours on his phone-screen, rambling on about his thesis and how he thinks that it would be better for him (and most probably the whole world) if his guide were locked up in a basement. 

San watches him as he's sanding down plywood or when he's assembling a vertical showcase. When Wooyoung catches him looking he goes quiet for a heartbeat and then blows him a kiss. San chortles, tucks it into his pocket, then goes back to work.

***  
  
---  
  
Wooyoung is twenty-one when he has his first heart attack. His friend finds him in a heap by his bookshelf. The only window in his room faces east, so the mid-morning sunlight that he is drowned in has managed to draw out a layer of perspiration on his forehead. 

For a second, the boy stands frozen at the doorway. It's an odd sight to withhold. Wooyoung is half naked, only a blue towel covering his nethers, and a toothbrush is hanging out of his mouth. Whatever struggle he faced before blacking out has caused the foamy paste to splash all over his chest. 

But it is not the horror of the situation that renders him incapable of moving a single muscle. It is the strange beauty of it. He'll think of this image of Wooyoung twenty years from now, when he's a weedy man smack in the centre of his midlife crisis, when his youth is a point near the sun at the horizon that he can't look at for too long, he'll remember Wooyoung like this with mind bending clarity. And the sheer brilliance of it will still cause a chill to run down his spine. 

He will think of what would have happened if he hadn't wanted to borrow the boy's razor that morning. He will wonder on quiet nights away from the children if that would've changed anything at all. 

But that is a long way from now. The finish line of the triathlon and he's only just heard the gunshot. 

The only future that concerns him right now involves getting Wooyoung some help, getting him to the hospital, if that's necessary, getting him out of that fucking Sun for God's sake, the boy's beautiful skin doesn't deserve to get baked like this. 

He's sobbing by the time his dorm-mates start filtering into the room, fingers hovering over his phone's keypad, tears running down his philtrum. 

_I heard him laughing in the hallway. It was only last night._

***

**Part Two : Hospital (Word count: 10,944)**

The hospital walls are periwinkle blue and the corridors smell exactly the way San had always thought they would when he used to watch those MD series on TV. That un-placeable stench of medicines and sterile surfaces and hope so raw it makes him look away from the sallow faces that surround him. 

And he is livid. Rage turning his temperature up by large decimals when the doctors refuse to look at him. They talk to San's parents and Wooyoung's father, their gaze skimming his face as if it's an old piece of furniture when they tell them about the condition of the boy in there. The one who's shared his bed on countless nights, the one who came running to him after he had shaved his stubble for the first time and came running to him still, seven years later, when all his long-held dreams began coming true one by one. 

They speak of his Wooyoung, who sleeps in the ICU in his blue hospital gown and threadbare life. And they don't even spare him a glance. 

********

San doesn't recall a lot from that morning. Only the harried face of his mother after he had rushed from the bathroom to open his door after several hard raps against the wood. He remembers the top she was wearing, the orange H&M one that she reserved for good days. He wonders what had made her happy that early in the morning. 

He knows that the last coherent thought he had was _Who died and made you the bearer of all my bad news, Ma?_

And then all he remembers are hands. 

Rough, warm ones. His mother's, of course, he'll recognise them anywhere from all the scabs that are littered across the skin from years of heavy gardening. He can still feel them running over his back in hurried circles when his knees had given out and he had stumbled pathetically against the doorframe. 

And then the wrinkly ones that belonged to his father. Fingers that encircled his wrist and asked him to be strong, be strong, San, you're braver than this. He had leaned against his chest, bending to compensate for the height difference, like all those times in his childhood, aeons ago, when the man had taught him how to ride a bicycle. 

And then he remembers long-fingered ones, strong hands that held him up by the elbow as he was ushered into a car. The ones that curled around his waist and pulled him into a warm chest where he lay frozen for the rest of the ride. Like a goat being ushered to the stone table. The ones that wiped away the silent tears that he didn't know he was shedding before a hundred kisses were placed into his scalp. 

Mingi. 

All he remembers are the hands. All those hands and the fear that slashed his torso open, causing his gut to spill out for the world to see, to mock at, look how weak Choi San is, what a shameful excuse his parents have raised. 

He remembers the fear, alright. 

_What if he's already gone?_

***

The waiting room is small but never quiet.

Everyone talks in hushed voices, and it's for reasons beyond the requirements demanded by hospital etiquette, as if they'll scare themselves if they speak too loud. It's a quiet cacophony of little meaningless chitchats to fill the dragging minutes, words that dissipate into nothingness before it reaches the listener’s ears. But they never shut their mouth, not for a second, as if they know that the silence would somehow be worse.

San can't feel his legs anymore, the metal seats have managed to cut off his circulation and he feels a hundred nails rain out of his toes when he shifts around to lean against Mingi, who sits hidden behind the day's newspaper on his side. He watches a fly buzz around the empty coffee cups sitting on the table before him. A nurse zooms past the corridor outside, rolling an IV setup in front of her as her sandals hit the linoleum floor with noisy smacks.

"He called me at three am last night because he watched a Discovery documentary and the baboon reminded him of me." He tells no one in particular, but he feels Mingi stiffen in his seat.

A heavily pregnant woman who had been dozing over her husband's shoulder for the past half hour slowly climbs up to her feet and ambles out of the room. San gives the grey-haired man a small smile when he looks over, as he is rolling out what must be a thrumming cramp in his forearm. He nods in return.

"He hates wearing socks, Mingi." He says, his voice unconvincingly nonchalant. "He ate soap when we were young and watches Nanny McPhee when he's bored." He shakes his head and scoffs. "Why did I ever fall for him?"

The tears are silent when they come and unacknowledged as they slide off his cheek and onto his collarbones. He sees them in Mingi's eyes, too, when he lowers the paper. His fingers shake around it as he folds it over his lap.

He kisses the top of San's head. His smile is bleak and is most probably a reflection of San's own one.

"He's the best person we know." Mingi tells him.

And he starts laughing. Loud and ugly enough to earn them a bucket-load of judgmental glares. San widens his eyes at him with no avail. The boy seems inert as raucous laughter shakes his humongous frame.

He grabs San's shoulder and stares into his eyes, unadulterated fear pulsing behind his irises. "Let’s laugh San." He says, his voice breaking at his name. "We should laugh. Then whatever scares us will go away."

San pulls him against his chest and sobs into his soft hair.

Wooyoung doesn't wake up that night.

***

They are staying at the house that Mingi has rented for them. (Shut up, San, please, he's my best friend, too. I'm doing this for you as much as I'm doing it for me.) And he looks around for a notebook that night, turning the wooden shelves upside down in his efforts to find even a stack of papers that are clean enough to be used. 

He finds a tattered one stuffed into the carved vanity table in his room. He goes to sleep with the ancient thing resting on his chest. And packs it diligently into his bag before leaving for the hospital the next morning. 

By the end of the day half the yellowed sheets of the book are filled with scribbles and bullet points accumulated over the span of the ten hours that the boy spent in the building. They surmise the information relayed by the doctors. Foreign words that make no more sense to San than hieroglyphs do. Phrases like tissue-staining and ceroids, mass-spec enzyme assays and atherogenic lipid profiles that sound like names of strange planets to San's untrained ears. There are even little scribbles in the margins denoting all the offhand remarks that the nurses have made throughout the day. 

Yunho's flight lands in the evening and the boy is at their place in record time. He doesn't leave San's side until he closes his bedroom door for the night, physically pushing the giant away from his threshold as he insists that he and Mingi wouldn't mind a bit if San wanted to sleep over in their room until he felt better. San declines with a polite smile on his face, not bothering to point out that he won't be feeling better anytime soon. He knows they mean the best. 

He doesn't go to sleep that night and spends the dragging hours before his phone-screen instead. He googles and jots down the meaning of every single term that's been scratched onto the surface of his little make-do diary. His eyes are distraught, red and tear-filled, by the time he finishes noting down the meaning of the last word at four in the morning. 

Lipids: Molecules that contain hydrocarbons and make up the building blocks of the structure and function of living cells. 

He leaves for the hospital at six. 

***

He's making cake. Chocolate, he supposes, when he sees a split packet of amorphous brown powder on the stone counter of his cafe. Three cups of flour, flat not mounded, and a cup of sugar, granulated. Fold, don't mix.

Clatter of the spatula against the glass bowl. Heinous beeping. The oven timer. He squats down to place the cake tin in the heated alcove and rises up in Mingi's bedroom. Blue and well-lit. The boy's hair is falling into his eyes as they sit on his bed. He doesn't move to brush it away. San looks down and there's a notebook in his lap, covered in scribbles, he recognises the disorganised loops. 

"It could've been me." He hears Mingi say. The words have travelled through oceans. 

"Me or him. A long time ago. Me, if it wasn't him."

San's gaze shoots up and there are tears in the boy's eyes. "Me, if you'd let me go." 

San wants water. Pivot. Pivot. No bottles. Only grey walls, Mingi's collection of Pokemon figurines, and lots of spinning. He keeps spinning. 

"Me or you. Me or you."

He sees Wooyoung. A blur of bubble-gum pink hair. Is he smiling? Is that a grimace? Is he in pain? 

"I like the way you hold my head." San finds himself screaming. There are fingers on his cheek, cold and gentle. Here and gone. "When we fuck, you cradle my neck. Have I told you how endearing that is?"

He wants the spinning to stop. His head hurts. 

"Will I ever be able to tell you now?" 

"You tell me when I get up."

Confluence of colours, blur and then seamless, he loses Wooyoung's face. 

"A hundred things."

"Tell them all when I get up."

Pushes. He gets pushed. He doesn't want to go. 

"Everything when I get up."

"Get up."

"Here, boy. Get up now."

A week later and San has fallen asleep on the row of chairs outside Wooyoung's ICU. He opens his eyes to find a stout, kind-faced nurse staring down at him in concern. 

"You okay there?" She asks, warm hand still placed comfortingly on his shoulder. He resists the urge to shrink away from the touch. 

It is her slight frown and the flash of her silver nameplate that reminds him of where he is. He climbs to his feet in a hurry, forcing the woman to stumble backwards due to the momentum. 

He helps her straighten up and bows in apology. "I'm so sorry. Is everything okay? Is he alright?" His chest is heaving up and down as he queries. 

His legs scream in protest, having been contorted into unnatural positions for the last half hour as he dozed off on the ungiving steel chair, but the pain doesn't even register in his head as he looks at the surprised nurse for an answer. 

"It's okay. He's fine." She tells him in a voice as soothing as she can manage. The thin silver ring on her nose moves from side to side as she speaks. "He's doing okay. The doctor just wanted to talk to his parents about his reports that came in."

Her hand runs in calming stripes over his forearm and he feels the effect in the deceleration of his heart rate. He nods as he gives her an anxious smile. She reaches up to pat him on the cheek. 

"Are the elders not around, child?" She asks him. 

Two nurses and a petite doctor with lead-grey hair blast out of the adjacent ward, they rush past San and the woman in a flurry of raised hands and barked orders.

"They've all gone for lunch." San explains. "But I'm here." He says, prodding an index finger into his chest. "I can meet the doctor and I'll let them know when they get back."

The aging nurse looks at him unsurely, her lips pressed into a thin line. She doesn't speak for a few moments, and simply looks at him as if she's weighing him out as an option. San tries to make himself seem as big as possible, relaxing his shoulder so they grow broad, chin moving high. He feels stupid.

"Are you sure?" She asks. 

With the way San nods his head, the nurse is surprised that he doesn't dislocate a joint. "Yes, ma'am, please. I'll be really attentive, I won't miss a word."

She nods at him haltingly before leading him through the swinging doors and across a short hallway, at the end of which he is directed to take his shoes off and replace them with a pair of crocs. 

"The doctor's in there." She informs him, pointing at another set of doors behind her. "Get in."

San does as he's told, which leads him to a long corridor, harshly illuminated and flanked on one side by a number of frosted glass doors. An old man in a large white coat stands hunched over a set of notepads and files by one of them. He looks up when he hears San approach. 

There are an impossible number of wrinkles criss-crossed across his face. They move like soft ripples on a pond when he speaks. "Wooyoung?" He asks in an uncharacteristically strong voice. 

"Yes, sir." San replies as he bows to the man. "I'm San, his... Uh... Friend."

The little man nods, causing the light from the bulb above to dance across his bald head. And to San's surprise, and barely withheld happiness, the man doesn't ask him if Wooyoung's parents are around. 

"San, that's a nice name." He says as he continues to skim through the pages in his notepad. "One of my grandsons is named San. He's about half your age. He plays volleyball." He adds with an airy chuckle. 

The sound somehow causes the nerves in San's system that are going haywire to quiet down to a steady sizzle, annoying but bearable. San finds a small smile trying to overtake his lips, he allows it to do so. 

The doctor looks up at him through his wire-rimmed glasses and San realises that his eyes are a light hazel in colour, bright and captivating in his ancient face. 

"The boy's reports came back this morning." He informs San. "I'll have to consult with my team once but the diagnosis is pretty clear this time.”

San looks at the man with eager eyes, ready to soak up any information volunteered with more passion than an overworked sponge. The doctor tells him of the disease that has taken over Wooyoung's cells, the one that's turned them into dysfunctional suicide bags. 

"Niemann-Pick." He calls it. "Type B, of course. Type A wouldn't have let him live for this long."

Something lights up in the back alley of San's mind. Vague recollections of a Wikipedia page and eyes too heavy to stay up any longer. "That's a lyser- lyso-" He stutters with a finger in the air, teeth biting down on the bottom lip out of frustration. 

"Lysosomal disorder, yes." The doctor's voice is mellow when he speaks. "It blocked his artery. Explains the CAD and the hepatomegaly." He pauses for a beat. "That's CAD and LSD." He bobs his head in that adorable way old people do. "You might want to write it down in that book of yours." 

San frowns as his fingers fidget with the flaking leather strap of his watch, not completely understanding what the man is trying to say. 

"That little notepad you carry around." He elaborates and San's eyes go wide. 

He asks him how he knows. The doctor shrugs, doesn't look up as he continues to skim through the file he's holding. "That kind of devotion," He says, putting down little cartoon ticks onto the ice blue paper. "I'd have to be older than this to miss it." 

He proceeds to wait wordlessly as San jots the words into an empty page and then talks to him for ten more minutes about Wooyoung's condition, always making sure to spell out the foreign-sounding words with a placid look on his face. 

_It's almost like he understands._

When he's about to leave he smiles up at San and places an archival hand on his shoulder. "I'll see you around, son." He says. "You should take care of yourself." He tips his head at the glass door behind him. "He's lucky. I hope he knows."

And then he's gone, the sharp clicking of heeled boots ricocheting off of the corridor walls with his gentle steps. San looks over at his notebook once more, ensuring that all his words are legible still. Then he pockets the little thing again and ambles out the way he came. 

___

The stream of doctors that they face for the rest of the day don't skim over San's face like he doesn't exist anymore. They answer the endless questions that he has, some are hurried, some impolite, but they never turn him down. 

San cries in his bed that night. The silver hands of his watch witnessing the idle tracks that the tears leave behind on his cheeks. They sympathise in their language of movement, causing the dreary minutes to slip away faster so that San can go and be closer to his boyfriend again. 

He cries like it's a duty bestowed upon him by invisible hands, determined to get rid of all the tears in his system, because the best he can offer is so little, pathetically negligible in the vast abyss of barely good enough that overpowers his being.

But he supposes that good-enough has to do for now. For the boy in that cold ward, amidst his beige walls and the plastic tentacles that split his skin. The boy dreaming his chemical dreams under the ersatz nebulaes of surgical lights.

***

They shift Wooyoung out of the ICU three days later. As they roll him out on a gurney, San sees his face fully (as much as is allowed by an encompassing oxygen mask and closed eyes) for the first time in months. 

Something big and foul-tasting blooms in the base of his trachea, threatening to cut off the air that is supposed to reach in to become his breath. He places a hand against his mouth as fresh sobs cause his chest to vibrate like a stricken gong. 

Wooyoung is a bag of bones draped in tissue-paper skin. Beneath the flimsy hospital gown is a collection of joints so flesh-less they look like daggers poking through the fabric, and collarbones so deep that if San were to cry into them now the tears would not spill over but get collected instead, like a sick prop for a grisly baptism, one that will ordain him into a private religion built on diaphanous hope and a string of two AM lies uttered through trembling lips. 

_And I'll continue to pray. To all the crosswalks you've held my hand at, to the breath you took before you first kissed me._

_I'll pray to all the stupid nicknames you'll give me in ten years and that first second-hand bed that'll be too small for us._

_I'll pray. To anything that's listening. And hope that I'm loud enough to be heard._

***

The walls of Wooyoung's private ward are a washed-out beige in colour. His blinds are white, turned cream due to the Sun. The TV that hangs before his baby blue bed, the one that will probably look more apt in a 90s sitcom, is plain black. 

San drives around the city for long hours in the morning, an elbow hanging out of the window, eyes peeled out for every store that flanks the busy sidewalks. Until he finds it. Sitting by a florist's window, small and unassuming, but hard to be looked over. 

He carries the little pot of a Crassula through the corridors with more pride on his face than he's ever allowed himself to show before. This one has orange flowers and pedal-flat leaves. A few heads turn but only silence follows. 

He sets the pretty thing down on the steel table by Wooyoung's bed, and it looks like it's always been there, someone had just moved it out for a little pruning and San has been kind enough to bring it back. 

***

He is on his phone as he traipses down the short stretch of stairs outside the hospital's main entrance. He squeaks as he slips on the last step and his right leg goes over, but he manages to break the fall by grabbing hold of the steel railings on his side. 

"You okay?" 

Yunho is on the other side. 

"I think I've forgotten how to walk." He says as he straightens himself up.

He hears Yunho chuckle. "So I'll send Mingi over with your lunch. He's made Onigiri."

San sighs. "You don't have to do that. I'll eat in the cafe."

"It’s okay, San. I ate it in the morning and I didn't choke. You'll be fine, trust me."

It makes San laugh but the sound is soon dissolved when he notices Wooyoung's father standing by the gates, puffing distractedly on a cigarette. 

"That's not what I meant." He says into the phone. 

"I know." Yunho replies. "He'll be there in a half hour." 

He hangs up on San, who then stuffs his phone into his jacket as he reluctantly makes his way towards the man. His suit blazer hangs more loosely around his spindly shoulders than San remembers. The fingers that hold the cigarette are yellow, the ugliest sunflower field blooming into existence beneath his skin. His nails are long and grimy at their beds. 

_He looks like an abandoned scarecrow_. 

San clears his throat as he approaches and the man turns to look at him. He then reverts his gaze unamusedly. 

"Going out for some air?" He asks before busying his lips with a long drag. San watches his surf board of a chest heave out due to the action. 

"No." He answers as the man weaves thick smoke tendrils out of his teeth. "They need some meds and the dispensary's run out. I'll go get them in the pharmacy over there." He waves his hand in the general direction of the place. 

"You should go home and rest." He says and casts a sidelong glance at San, which makes him shrink a little with unease. "You look awful." He adds without spite. 

San scowls at him. "Speak for yourself." He mutters under his breath, and then out loud he says, "I just need a bath."

The man nods, he doesn't push the topic. San isn't surprised. 

They watch the sluggish evening traffic move along the road. The man blows ivory clouds into the wind and San hovers over a bed of invisible nails. 

The pause drags on for too long. The ember drifts back until it's almost at his lips. They both wait, refusing to lose. 

And then San gets tired. 

"I heard you sold your car." He points his thumb over his shoulder, at the old hospital building. "For the treatment."

The man doesn't respond for a while as a bout of arid coughs overtake his body. He doesn't take long to recover, though. He's too used to the drill. "That I did." He affirms. 

San nods as he turns away. Someone starts inflating a balloon at the pit of his chest. Maybe it's his diaphragm again. 

"Thank you." He pushes the words over his tongue. "That means a lot."

The man laughs at that, a cynical sound that doesn't sit well with San. "That's my son you're talking about, boy." He reminds him. "The flow of gratitude should be the other way round."

"Yeah. It's just... "

_Funny you should remember that now_.

San bites his tongue.

It's not worth it. 

Mr. Jung flicks the last of the ashes of his smoke onto the ground. The expression on his face is one that San has seen on many adults throughout his life. It appears with the delayed realisation that the children are right. 

"Thank you." He says, not meeting San's eyes. "He's lucky to have you."

San tucks his smile away for later. He'll need it then. He forces his hand up to pat the man on the back. 

"You're doing great." He doesn't know why he says it, but he has a feeling that the man needs to hear the words, even if he doesn't bother to look at him. "He'll be happy to know."

Mr. Jung nods wordlessly and reaches into his pocket for a second cigarette. He lights it up with a hand cupping his mouth and flicks the matchstick before throwing it away. 

San bows and turns to leave.

He'll pretend that he didn't see the first of the tears that had beaded in his eyes. 

***

August mornings are about rubber sandwiches and breathless marathons between pharmacies, it is about the abject refusal of peeking into mirrors in fear of finding a body that is an inch of flesh and a film of hope away from a corpse. It is about counting the beeps of Wooyoung's monitor and losing breath at the pregnant pause between each one, because how can you ever prepare yourself to stand, heart beating, at your own funeral?

"-considering angioplasty." The weighted words demand San's attention, away from the drip of IV by Wooyoung's bed where he has been looking for the past two minutes. 

He looks at the tall man before him, Dr. Yoon, as his bronze name-tag reads, rather sheepishly for being distracted. He gets in return a small smile that is soon drowned amidst the wrinkles of a frown. 

"I'm sorry, sir. What did you-?"

"It's okay, San. It's okay to not have your wits about you. I'm surprised you're up and walking around with the amount of sleep I've seen you get." He pats San's shoulder with a frail hand. 

Pity is cheaper than a pack of smokes, San has come to realize in the past month. Even a bum on the streets will offer it to you for free. So the magnitudes of it pulsing out of the man before him is of no surprise to San. 

He nods without words. 

"We're considering angioplasty.” He says.

San edgily removes his book and a pen from his pocket and scribbles the word down by an empty margin. _How do you move with eyes on you_?

"When he's stable enough, we'll start the procedure." The doctor informs him, glancing over at the boy on the bed. "Oh, look who's awake."

San follows his gaze, dragonfly flutters in his chest, to find a pair of droopy eyes staring at him. 

"He sees you. At least his heart does." Says the old man, now looking at the heart-rate monitor by Wooyoung's bed. San doesn't understand the sounds, but they definitely are different from the steady beeps from two minutes ago. 

"You should go talk to him." Mr. Yoon suggests. "I'll see you in the evening. Get some sleep.” He adds before striding out of the room. 

San bows to the nurse who is now straightening the bed sheets around Wooyoung's legs. She smiles at him. 

_More of that pity._

San settles himself over the steel stool, an arms-length away from Wooyoung, centimetres too far. 

"Look whose lazy ass is up again." He whispers, combing a damp strand of hair away from the boy's eyes. "Tired?"

Wooyoung continues to look at him, unflinching.

"You must be. What with trying to survive and all. You're doing so well." San croons. 

"I heard a few nurses speaking in the hallway. They think you're handsome." He chirps and turns around to look at the nurse who is in the room, to apologize in case he’s offended her with the lie. She's left.

He looks back at Wooyoung. "I was going to agree but I don't lie." He tells the living log on the rough white sheets.

Wooyoung's breathing is so deep, his chest so imperceptible in its rise and fall that the faint rattle of the oxygen tank is the only proof that he's even using his lungs. San feels like he's the one with all the needles puncturing his skin. 

"Does it hurt to breathe?" He asks.

There's a clip in his throat. He speaks around it. 

_Is that my voice?_

"Does it hurt when you breathe, baby?" 

There is a twitch between Wooyoung's brows, a fold of skin that smoothens as soon as it appears. 

San reaches under the blankets and fishes one of Wooyoung's hands out. He gingerly brings it up to his face, careful not to displace any of the hundred tubes hanging around the boy like a diabolical cobweb. He kisses each of the knuckles, the capillary thin scar at the base of his pinkie, left there from a misplaced punch. Then he unfolds the fingers, kisses the rosy tips, beneath the recently trimmed nails. 

"I'm sorry. Sorry." He says. A carcanet of scarlet skies for the falling dawn, a shroud of words for a dying boy (him or the one on the bed?).

"We'll get out of here. Soon. And we'll go to that restaurant again. The one with the mini Al Pacino." He recites, voice resolute. "You can order that champagne again and I'll take the lasagne. You'll look at me with that head tilt of yours and we can't get to your dorm room fast enough. I'll make love to you on your knobbly mattress, windows open, I'll have my baby in the moonlight. And we'll-"

San stops mid-sentence to watch the growing frown on the boy's face. The breeze blowing through the single window makes him aware of the moisture on his cheeks. 

He snorts before he speaks. "You think I'm ugly when I cry." He reads.

Nothing.

And then Wooyoung blinks.

"You bastard." 

He leans down to kiss his forehead, the only spread of skin free to touch on the boy's face, and wipes away his own tears. 

"I'll get you out of here so you can be openly sarcastic about my existence again. I'll have Mingi smack your-"

He continues to spin half-truth dreams to a boy who falls asleep faster than he runs out of breath. 

He's thankful. 

***

Wooyoung is always sleeping, medications pulling him under faster than a bag of rocks. Purple lids drooped over bloodshot eyes, he dozes as if San isn't falling apart at the foot of his bed. 

But sleep is better than watching his animalistic heaves for breath, eyes rolling into his skull until he looks like a horror movie that San didn't pay for. 

_Pulmonary manifestations of the disease_ , they say it is. _Quite common for the condition he has._

All San sees are white knuckles and sapphire lips, a boy wasting away until he is no more than a bump separating the blankets from the mattress. 

San thinks about the big words they use to name agony, _myocardial and pulmonary_ , like trying to hide mountains with a handkerchief, because maybe if you don't understand it, it won't affect you, maybe if you don't understand it, you can pretend it doesn't exist. 

***

A piercing series of beeps, resembling some ill-scripted Morse-code pulls him out of a mechanical stupor. He's at a dusty McDonald's drive-thru in Wooyoung's car, waiting for his order to be prepared when he peeks down at his phone on the shotgun seat, buzzing away by several millimetres over the sun-faded leather cover. 

His sister's name flashes on the neon blue screen and he accepts the call with urgent fingers, putting her on speaker for convenience. 

"Noona?" He chirps before she has the chance to greet him properly.

"Where are you? At the hospital?" She asks. 

That's always her first question. Not an _Are you okay?_ Or a narrower _Did you have breakfast?_ But several rearranged versions of _Where are you?_ San thinks it's because she likes picturing people as they're talking to her. Where are their steps taking them? What are they seeing? 

"No. I came out to grab something to eat."

"Hmm." She breathes. He can almost see her slow nods. "How is he?"

San frowns at the blue-green needle of the odometer. How does he respond to that?

_Not dead? Still hanging in there?_

He settles for a less harsh "Okay, I think. He was sleeping when I left."

A pause. San holds up a finger when the drive-thru employee, an impish girl wearing her cherry cap backwards, peeks out of the sliding window to ensure how many slushies he wants. 

"What did the doctors say?" 

She studies the same major as Wooyoung, Biochemistry, so he doesn't have to exert his vocabulary skills to dumb down the words for her. He tries to relay word to word everything that Mr. Yoon has told him over the past few weeks, but he doesn't have his book on him, so he misses out meagre bits. He hopes they're not important. 

"That's good." She mulls, once he's done reporting. 

San receives his brown bag with a little bow, the sliders at the bottom warms his lap as he pulls out of the narrow driveway. He has to take a right and drive around the block if he wants to go back to the hospital but reluctant fingers pull the steering wheel in the opposite direction.

_Why hurry back if no one's waiting for you?_

"That’s really good, San-ah. Angioplasty is good." She repeats and he nods, hoping she's right. “Mom's with you?"

"No, both of them left a week ago. Moping around here isn't going to run mom's business now, is it?"

"So you're alone?"

"Mingi and Yunho are around. But after they leave tomorrow night, I guess I will be." San shrugs as he speaks, trying not to sound sad. Because really, he’s not. He understands that everyone can’t stick around to simply keep him surrounded.

Lives, like businesses, can’t run themselves.

_Then why am I frozen still?_

"His dad will still be here, but does he really count?" He adds, to compensate for staying quiet for a beat too long.

There are sounds of utensils being moved around. For a second the line goes silent and San frowns out of the windshield, at the meandering stretch of the slate-grey road before him. Then the clinking sounds return. San wonders what she’s making for lunch.

And then, "Bubba?"

"Hmm?"

"Can you do something for me? Remember that favour?"

San wants to snort. _Asking riches from beggars. What does that make you?_ But he holds it back. 

"Yes."

"Will you do it for me then?"

"Do what?"

She pours something into the heated oil, he can hear the unruly sizzling taking over the line. She sighs, a heavy sound that speaks nothing about exhaustion.

_She’s_ _worried._

He rolls his eyes.

_No shit._

He can see her leaning against the black counter, staring at her little fridge with a scowl.

"I want you make it to the other side.” She says then. “Of whatever this is. I want you to survive it. Better people might ask you to learn your lessons from it, but I think that's bullshit. Lessons are for hindsight, for five years from now when pain isn't curling your toes under you. So it's okay if you only just survive this. Eat, sleep, take care of yourself. You don't have to go through some spiritual revelation that'll boost you to the next phase or something."

Static fills the air, tingles his fingers. Then she's back. 

"Hold his hand. Put him in front, let him lead if you can't. Don't grin when you want to breakdown. Be brave for him but don't fool him into thinking that you're doing okay. You're not. So don't hide it. He has to see that he needs to get better. You'll be surprised by how strong the people you love can be for you, bubba. And that boy looks at you like you made the Big Bang happen or something, he'll work wonders for you if you let him."

He can hear the smile in her voice and he thinks, _You're Mars. Red-hot and vibrant. Always so close to my planet._

"Will you promise me, then? That when I come visit you when this is all over, sooner if I can, I'll still see you breathing. Frail and exhausted, if it gets to that. But I want you to be there when I come. I don't care if it's a completely different person that I'll get to meet, but as long there's a person there, alive, that's all that matters. Will you do that for me, bubba?"

San struggles to hold back a bitter laugh, he escapes with a little snort, which then morphs into a lone cough. He hopes that she didn’t notice. He was thinking about how pinkies are always burdened with more weight than they can carry.

"I promise."

They talk for a few more minutes, filler words about lunch and the rain. I love yous are whispered in mechanical voices. Then the line goes dead.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three.

San pulls over, gravel crunching beneath the heavy tyres.

There's something about eating lunch by the side of a near-empty highway, watching the steady trickle of cars and trucks until they fade into wiggly lines over the horizon. For starters, it doesn't smell like medicine and nauseatingly fruity floor cleaners. Also your lover isn't dying on the other side of the wall, so there's that, too. 

San finishes his greasy meal in silence, moving in between only to get the food to his lips and to adjust the rear view mirror. 

Then he starts the engine and drives back to the hospital.

***

He wakes up due to the heat, having fallen asleep at the little suede couch in Wooyoung’s ward after returning from the cafeteria. Now the west-bound Sun drowns him in a pool of gilded light, sweat soaking the front of his button-down shirt, forming a little puddle above his lips. 

His eyes reach involuntarily to the bed at the centre of the room, seeking the sight of a mop of mahogany hair sticking out of the ivory sheets. He frowns at the metal post, heart almost at the start of its hundred mph sprint. The blankets lay in a haphazard clump at the edge, as if someone had kicked them off in a hurry. 

_No Wooyoung_ is the only thought bouncing around the throbbing walls of his sleep-addled brain. 

_No Wooyoung._

_Did he fall off the bed?_

_Did he hit his head?_

_Did I sleep through the screams?_

_Can he scream?_

_He can barely speak..._

_What if-_

And then his thoughts simmer down to a quiet thrum. _There_ is the boy. An arm thrown over the shoulder of the on-duty nurse (So Ra-Noona, as the tall woman had sternly pointed out, when San had called her Mrs. Park for the hundredth time) as they take sluggish steps towards the bathroom.

She holds him up by the waist and Wooyoung's back is angled in such a way that he's supporting most of his own weight, as if determined to ensure that the lady exerts the least amount of energy in the whole scenario. San is reminded of the first time he had taught Wooyoung how to ride a bike. They were seven. He had ridden off the curb and smashed into a mail box. But he remembers the boy’s face as the wind had bought tears in his eyes, the stern frown between his eyebrows as he had tried to get the pedal moving, even though his toes barely touched its plastic surface. He remembers the knuckles that had gone white over the handles. 

Wooyoung never failed, and San had learnt that pretty fast.

It is the same iron look that resides over the boy's face now, the same set jaw and hardened eyes, as the duo ambles towards the grey door at the end of the room. 

And then Wooyoung turns, as if he's heard his name being called, to look directly at him. And this leaves San flustered for a moment, like he's a toddler caught sneaking into the kitchen past bedtime, his cheeks heating up until there are little stoplights beneath his eyes. 

He prepares himself for sharp rebuke, steeling his skin against a grimace, a curt flick of a wrist asking him to look away, even a few mangled words of indignation. He doesn't know why. What has he done wrong? But he goes rigid anyway. 

And waits. 

But there is nothing to harden himself against. 

Except maybe the grin that Wooyoung directs at him in the next moment. The boy beams, like a halogen lamp through dystopian smog, mouth closed, eyes wide, a rose veil thrown over his pallid skin. 

_He doesn't look like a corpse anymore._

San smiles back, slow, unsure, as if terrified that if he moves too fast then the strings holding up the corners of Wooyoung's lips will be startled into non-existence. 

_Hey, there._

So-Ra shakes her head, an almost imperceptible movement of her see-through bangs, when San attempts to get off the seat to go help. 

"We got this." She mouths at him, with a reassuring nod of her head. 

He slinks back down onto the couch and looks at them for another second, face relaxing as he takes in the view of Wooyoung on his feet again. He turns around to reach for the glass of water that's been laid out on the table beside him, seeking to relieve his parched throat. The Sun has run him dry down to the marrow. 

His hand is about to curl around the damp surface of the cup when a muted thud reaches his ears. He's on his feet before he's even had the chance to turn around, the sound acting as a catalyst to his already jumpy senses. His gaze makes a straight line to the spot on the carpet where Wooyoung had just now been standing. 

"Oh, Lord, I'm so sorry." So-Ra is babbling from her crouched position beside Wooyoung, who now lies in a heap of slack meat amidst the faded blue hospital gown. His eyes are on San's face, filled up to the brim, lips trembling with the oncoming of sobs that will soon take over his chest. 

He looks like a pathetic game of Jenga. Except there are no winners here. 

San crouches down by the boy, arms instinctually reaching out to settle themselves around his waist. "Hey." He whispers, looking straight into Wooyoung's eyes. "It's okay. I got you. It’s fine.”

"I'm sorry, San." Comes the desperate voice from above him. So-Ra seems to have gotten to her feet in the meantime. "I didn't realise the hypotonia was this bad." She reaches down to hook her hands under the boy's armpit. "I should've got him the bedpan instead-" 

San holds up a hand and looks up to smile at her and hopes that the disappointment is not twisting his features strongly enough for it to be unconvincing. "It's fine, noona. Just help me-"

His words are cut short when something warm touches his knee. He looks down to find a muted yellow spot on the oyster-white carpet, fast spreading around where Wooyoung's hips and thighs are laid against the floor. 

San looks at the boy first in mild confusion and then with dawning horror. His chest goes slack, a meaty slump in his ribcage. Wooyoung looks away, his chin trembling, as he continues to pee himself. 

He doesn't speak, doesn't move. He doesn't even hear So-Ra walking out of the room to go get some help, although he's assured that they don't need any. He can lift his Wooyoung up all by himself, thank you very much. 

He continues to sit on the floor with the boy in his arms, as the fingers of moisture travel up the fabric covering his kneecap. And he starts crying, bastard tears that go unacknowledged again. They silently soak his shirt as he pulls the boy up to his feet, wobbly knees and all, and half-carries him to his bed. 

So-Ra gets back with another nurse, a thin man in a snapback who looks like he's at the rear end of his shift. She apologizes again and he shakes his head at her. 

_Not now, please._

The duo get to work on spreading paper towels over the soiled portion of the carpet. San places Wooyoung on the edge of the bed and watches the boy's hands grind into each other in his lap. He still refuses to look him in the eyes, staring resolutely at the old lampshade instead. 

San pats the back of his head and pulls him against his torso, cheek flat against the plastic buttons of his shirt. 

"Shhh." He soothes, bleak eyes gazing out of the window, at the parapet outside that is painted in blue and red. 

"Shhh. Don't you cry now." He orders. "I've had it with the tears, you don't get to cry now."

His voice is frail, contrasting the harsh words that it articulates. He steps back until Wooyoung is no longer hiding against his body. With gentle hands he holds up the boy's face until he's forced to look into his eyes. 

"I can't take your tears, Young-ah." He tells him. "I've cried enough to last me a lifetime. If you break now, I'll go down with you." He wipes away a drop on the boy's cheek with his thumb. "I'll go down with you, Young-ah, and then what do we do? Where will we go?"

He hears the whispered argument between the nurses behind him. A huff. Retreating footsteps. They close the door as they leave. 

San loosens a hand to smooth down the boy's hair. He glances at the shut door, before reverting his eyes back to San and takes in a deep breath, unsteady and rattling. Wind down a broken tunnel. 

"L-leave." He utters, voice hoarse and strained, as if he's been shouting all day. When in reality he's barely spoken a syllable. "Go, S-san-ah."

San lowers himself to his knees, as if pushed down by invisible hands. 

"Leave? Leave and go where?" He demands. His tears aren't quiet now, they're raging, demanding their presence to be felt. He brushes them away with a rough hand. "Where will I go? I'll leave because you've lost bladder control? They're pumping medications in you like you're living off of them. What did you expect?"

He grits his teeth against the anger that’s threatening to char his skin. _What am I even mad at?_

"Would you leave me if I peed myself? If you had to clean my crap every morning, would you leave me?"

Wooyoung looks up at him through the tears. Eyes ablaze. Molten lava on the seabed. 

He shakes his head no. Lips spluttering. 

"Then how dare you ask that of me?"

Wooyoung runs a thumb along the soft flap of his ear, he sobs as he speaks. "No, no m-money."

San catches his trailing hand and places a kiss on his palm. Sick love of the have-nots, the kind that keeps the slums alive. 

"I have all the money we need." He spits, teeth clenched, jaw tense. "Enough to keep our heads above the water. And I'll get more if we must. I'll get as much as I can. And all you have to do is get better. That thing in there," He says, poking an index finger into the boy's chest. "Keep that beating? For us. And I'll find all the money we need."

He pauses to gather his breath. "Money only buys the beds, Wooyoung." He states, hand cupping the boy's cheek. "You bring the sleep. You bring the warmth. Take you out and I'm left with a bunch of coffins. That money you're talking about, all it can then buy me is a cemetery. Open coffin for the walking corpse. Perfect, isn't it? So fucking ideal, Young-ah." 

He laughs bitterly and Wooyoung shakes his head. He laughs against the damp hospital gown until tears choke the sounds.

And then he cries with his boyfriend. Broken sobs of the penultimate, hacking sniffles of the conclusion. They cry until So-Ra opens the door haltingly, and stands shifting from foot to foot at the doorway. They pull apart, arms still linked, to look at the woman.

"Change of clothes, Wooyoung?" She asks brightly, gesturing to the set of fabric in her hands. "Before you get cold."

***

His credit card gets declined for the first time at a convenience store. He's buying sandwiches (ramen makes his insides hurt now). 

The change in his wallet is a few Wons short of the neon green digits being displayed by the counter-machine. He puts the wrapped squares back into their rack in the aisles. 

***

He sells his cafe. The customer was his junior in college, his mother a treasurer of the institution. 

San used to tutor him on weekdays. The money that the boy had paid had bought him lunch for six months. 

***

San is returning from a brief phone call with his parents (We’re okay, Ma, you don’t have to come over again.) when he sees Wooyoung’s father in his ward, standing hunched over the boy’s bed. He goes immobile, hand resting over the slate-grey doorknob, as he watches the man’s hand rub soft circles onto his son’s exposed foot.

His lips are moving, indulging the sleeping boy in futile conversations that should’ve been voiced aeons ago, and even from this distance San knows that the words being spoken are no louder than muted whispers.

But he sighs nonetheless. _Better late than never_ bringing a sour laugh up to his throat, and closes the door noiselessly behind him before walking away.

***

Two weeks later San is given permission to take Wooyoung out of his ward, nothing elaborate, only short rounds across the cramped corridors and a few hours before twilight that can be spent in the little flower garden cum play-park of the hospital.

He stands quietly behind the boy’s wheelchair, sometimes even sits cross-legged on the jade grass by the rubber tyres, as they watch the children squeal into the wind when they shoot up in the see-saws or descend over the spiral slides.

Sometimes Wooyoung turns to him with a face-splitting smile, jutting his chin sideways, wanting him to notice something that has made him happy.

“Car.” He says when it’s a sleek automobile gliding over the cement road outside.

San nods, beaming up at the transient glow in the haggard boy’s face. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” He asks as he grasps the hand that reaches out to touch him.

Wooyoung frowns when he wants to speak, throat bobbing up and down, as if he has to physically push the words out of his mouth, his voice as diaphanous as the colourful petals that surround them. His thumb squeezes against San’s palm and he talks, breath rattling between each syllable he utters. “Beautiful, aren’t you?”

***

Mingi and Yunho tiptoe into Wooyoung's ward with a blueberry cake in hand. It’s way too many hours past the visiting period but there's rarely a soul that isn't moved by Mingi's pout, or maybe it was the green bills from his wallet that did all the moving, but those are questions for a different night.

San wakes up first, tongue numb with the aftertaste of the seething soup he had had for dinner, eyes crusty with sleep that dangles from his lashes. He watches the two boys glide into the room, faces aglow in the orange candle-lights. Yunho is almost vibrating in excitement behind Mingi's broad shoulders. 

"Your phone." Mingi hisses as San stares up at him perplexedly.

He fetches the device from beneath his jacket on the table and finds a text from his best friend splitting his lock screen. It was received an hour ago, San must have slept through the notification ding. 

Mingi (22:56) : Yunho's birthday tomorrow. He wants to celebrate with us. We're coming over. 

San digs Wooyoung out of the blankets, fingers gentle against clammy skin and they place a Finding Nemo birthday hat on his droopy head. 

He smiles through the haze of medications and the shower of iridescent confetti as Yunho slices the cake, hands barely firmer than noodles as they meet for weak claps before his chest. 

Yunho holds the lavender cake up to Mingi's lips, shy gaze and sticky fingers. He licks the mauve cream off of his thumb after he's fed the boy. 

San watches Wooyoung's lids droop over bright eyes, sluggish, as he fights against the heavy anchors of the painkillers coursing through his arteries. Fumbling fingers and a flutter of lashes. 

He's gone with the flicker of the candles, pulled under against his will, away from the arms that want to keep him there, amidst the confetti, and the cake, and the quiet hum of birthday tunes pulsing out of Mingi's phone. 

___

San stands leaning over the concrete railings, head hanging down, face submerged in the humid breeze that dulls the city's streetlights. He's on the hospital's roof, halfway through his break away from the din of incessant movement, soggy sandwiches and periwinkle walls. 

Cars move along the streets like luminescent bugs seven floors below, and he takes count of the SUVs, folding fingers for each giant beetle that rounds the corner. 

One Toyota. 

And three Volkswagens. 

There goes a Mercedes and-

"Hey." A soft voice pulls him away from his crouch around the parapet. 

He turns around to find Yunho making his way across the vast terrace. _He even walks like a dancer,_ he thinks as the boy lithely sways around the concrete slabs that have been erected for some alien reason that San can't comprehend right now.

He finds his gaze darting to the wooden doorway that opens up to the rooftop, heart traveling up his oesophagus until it almost reaches his mouth. 

Yunho follows his gaze and turns around to shake his head pacifyingly at San. "Hey, it's okay." He says as he climbs over the raised wrap-around platform on which San is standing. "Mingi's with him."

San nods slowly, twisting his torso back around until he's facing the jagged skyline again. Something cold touches his forearms and he looks down to find a can of Soju being pressed against his skin. 

"Figured you'd need one." Comments Yunho as he pulls another one of the drink out of his jacket. San smiles at him. 

They clink cans, the metal pitch loud against the murmuring night, and San takes a long first sip. The fizzy drink bubbles its merry way along his throat, warming all the muscles it contacts on its way down.

"He's lucky." He hears Yunho say. He's through with his first sip, too, and wipes the back of his hand along his slick lips. "To have you. Even if just as a friend. Not everyone sticks around like this."

San frowns at him. "Mingi would do it too, you know?" He asks, confused at the reassuring tone of his own voice. He didn't realise that he had it in him to comfort other people, let alone those who didn't even ask for it in the first place. "He wouldn't think twice about it."

Yunho turns away, expression unreadable. "I guess you're right." He says. 

San goes back to his counting and a veil of comfortable silence falls between them. He is surprised yet again because he's never been left alone with the tall boy before. And yet this feels like the most natural thing ever. 

A Hyundai. 

Another Toyota. 

Three more beats and a Mitsubishi. 

And a thought monopolizes San's mind, sits like a hot ball of iron on his tongue. He lets it out. 

"I'm lucky, too, you know?" He starts, side-eyeing Yunho. "He would be screaming down the corridors at all the white coats if it were the other way round, smart as he is. He would've probably had me out of here a lot sooner, too. He's stubborn like that, he doesn't let anything annoy him for too long."

"Hey." Yunho breathes, settling a hand on San's shoulder. "You're doing your best, too."

San lets out a little laugh as he shakes his head. "I'm not talking myself down." He assures the boy. "He's just awfully smart, is all. It's annoying, really."

Yunho chortles, cheeks puffing up like toasted marshmallows, curved set of teeth bucking out ever so slightly. 

_It's not hard to imagine why Mingi fell for him._

"So?" Chirps up the boy, eyes beaming up at San. "What is it like? Loving someone that brilliant?"

San snorts, a small sound of disbelief. "Did I also mention that he's a humongous idiot?" He tells the snow-skinned dancer, voice so fond it flowers garlands on its way up his throat. 

Love, Yunho has said. Is that the word? 

"How do I put into mere words the enigma that is my boyfriend?" Articulates San, laughing slightly at his own mock grandeur. Yunho watches with curious eyes, the can of Soju between his fingers almost forgotten. 

"Dating Wooyoung is like watching a movie," He says, taking a sip out of his own can. "It's a good one, it's not boring you out of your senses. Halfway through and you decide that maybe you'll even watch it again. And then there's this scene, and this song in the background. The moment you hear the first few beats you know," His eyes grow in brightness as he speaks, as if being controlled by an invisible regulator.

"You _know_ you'll never forget this movie. This scene, you'll remember the details down to the colour of the clothes the actors are wearing. The credits will roll and you'll google that song. You listen to it enough that you'll even sing along in your sleep if someone plays it by your head. Twenty years later, a lifetime away, maybe you hear it at a party again, maybe a long drive and it's the RJs retro pick of the day, you hear those first few beats again and you're transported back in an instant, to the first time you ever heard that tune. Now you even remember the clothes that _you_ were wearing when it happened. It's your personal little time capsule, a little doorway suspended in space and only you will ever get to walk past the threshold."

He takes a deep breath after the long speech, slightly embarrassed at the thought that he might be oversharing, maybe even boring Yunho with his words. But the look on the other boy's face tells him that that's not the case. 

He continues with relief. "Loving Wooyoung is like that. Like thanking a movie for a song." He declares. "I get to thank him for my life."

He then shakes his head a little, as if pulling himself out of a trance. He turns to Yunho and they simply look at each other for a few quiet seconds, no sentences dying to be spoken, no questions waiting to be answered. Silent affirmations of unspoken inquires. 

_How long have we really known each other for me to talk to you like this?_

_Forever._

And then Yunho breaks the spell. "Boy, I might cry." The bright shimmer of his cornea tells San that the boy is not completely lying. 

He smirks as he looks away. "It's okay." He breathes. "I won't tell anyone."

They stay on the rooftop for another half an hour, sluggishly emptying the now-flat alcohol into their systems. Yunho asks him about how Wooyoung is really doing. (It's like when you're doing the dishes and you're almost done. Then there's this one large vessel sitting at the bottom of your sink, filled to the brim with water and when you empty it there are five more dishes inside. It's incessant, the running around. He's almost okay and then he's just not anymore.) 

San smiles bitterly at his eloquence. Pain indeed turns you into a poet.

He asks Yunho about their college, is it actually okay that they're staying over for this long? Mingi barely ever tells him the truth. When do they have to get back for their next semester? 

Laughter ridden chitchats spreading a welcome spell of normalcy in San's life, no matter how short, until faded orange clouds march over to cover the indigo sky. Then they duck back into the doorway that leads to the long staircases that will take them back into the mechanical warmth pulsing through the hospital floors. 

When they get back to Wooyoung's ward, they find Mingi fast asleep on the couch, an arm thrown across his eyes.

***

Wooyoung starts walking on his own again. He trips over his toes and his fingers fumble for purchase on San’s forearm, his eyes are constantly staring down at the floor when he moves, as if quietly reprimanding his feet to do their job right.

He’s given crutches for the time being and he likes to nudge San’s calf with them when he walks ahead of him. It’s his version of _Slow, I’m still back here, you show off._

San does it on purpose sometimes, simply to feel the boy’s palm curling into a fist at the hem of his shirt. Because every time Wooyoung pulls him back again, he presses a kiss into the slope of his shoulder and then to the side of his face.

_What’s the point of being so fast? You’ll only have to stand waiting at the finish line._

_***_

It is the new kalimba ringtone of his phone that breaks the Omerta-like silence that the living-room has been stewing in all afternoon. He looks up from the oblong food-stain that he's been trying to grub out of the oven for the past fifteen minutes and at the rectangle of light buzzing animatedly over the sofa in the middle of the room. 

He has spent a healthy part of the day trying to clean the large space that he's come to recognize as a makeshift home in the past few weeks. He's not particularly a fan of cobweb-dusting or utensil organisation, all the neat-freak genes having been meticulously monopolized by the gametes that were passed on to his sister (who has bullet journals for cleaning schedules and gets excited when she sees a dustpan in the home-ec pamphlets). But he soon figures that Saturday mornings are not meant for idle hands. 

He reaches the living room in five long strides, wiping his grimy hands on the washcloth that is hanging out of his jeans pocket, unaware of the catastrophe waiting for him on the other side of the cracked screen of his phone, one green button holding back all the words that will disintegrate the delicate skyscraper of sanity that the boy has managed stack up in the few hours he's spent alone. 

The name blinking up at him sparks no joy in his chest, but he receives the call with a grunt anyway. 

"San?" Says Wooyoung's father, sounding so haggard and scared that San feels his own frown growing deeper as he stares down at the carpet by his slipper-clad feet. 

_What has the smoke done to your voice?_ He thinks. _You're speaking in ashes._

"Yeah?" He says, primal claws of something akin to fear getting hold of his throat. He pushes down the ugly feeling with a metaphorical plunger and tries to hold it down by his stomach. "What's wrong?"

There is a pause and a grumble of voices, as if the man is answering someone's question. San clutches the device tighter against his earlobe and waits, toes going cold as he stands unmoving in the empty house. 

"Is everything okay?" He asks, harsher this time, hoping that the acid in his voice will get the man to divert his attention back to him. It works. 

"No, son." Mr. Jung says. "I went to give him his breakfast and-and he was heaving on the bed, clutching his throat. He looked so small. I-I called for the doctors immediately. They're-" He takes a moment to gulp down the sobs that are clearly trying to overtake his voice. "They're saying his vitals are unstable. They're saying he needs to be operated on or he won't make it. It's not making sense, son, he's only a child, he hasn't even-"

San is already halfway through the door when the man hangs up on him, unstable voice rendering him too incomprehensible to continue. He pockets the keys to Wooyoung's car and forgets to don his jacket that he had draped over the sofa's wooden arm last night. The washcloth from before sits discarded by the front door, the oven is still open, metallic mouth agape as it watches the dust motes that the boy's hurried departure has pulled up dance leisurely in the gilded morning light. 

The living room is quiet again, basking in the fading warmth of a disconnected body, of a boy who hummed broken tunes that spoke more about stories than music, whistled breaths telling the kitchen tiles about a rose-bud love that had grown too big for its roots, the one that had bloomed way too soon in its loose-earthed meadow, and had lost its gauzy blue petals to ruthless winds that always forgot to take away the rest of the plant. 

About _his_ rosebud-love who is going too fast. And San's roots which aren't strong enough to hold them both back. 

***  
  
---  
  
**Part Three : Wooyoung (Word Count: 4,253)**

Shoveled snow forms little makeshift mountains on either side of the damp roads, a gigantic blanket of ivory, flooding every front yard, pushing in against the cracks in the door. It absorbs every little sound that is made, down to a jogger's heavy sigh, sucking the decibels into its soft underbelly, rendering the grey town ghost-quiet in its wake. 

There are thunderclouds concealing the sky, they look like they belong on a different planet, one much more primitive, the kind that hasn't witnessed even a trace of life in its most bogus dreams. Not a bird flaps its feathers. This is kind of stillness that flusters death. 

A little flake descends into the dusty groove between the window-sill of San's bedroom. He blows it away with a soft breath. 

He sits on his bed, tired arms leaning against the wall, chin resting in the crook of his elbow. He's just returned to his room after taking care of a truck worth of laundry and there's a kink in his back that he knows won't ease up for at least the next three days. A pashmina is draped around his bowed shoulders, fresh out of the dryer in all its fuchsia glory. He snuggles the downy fabric closer against his chest and sighs, a little white spectre escaping his lips, it billows out before his eyes. 

He turns around, flinging his legs off the edge of the mattress, eyes falling on the set of clothes arranged meticulously over the arms of the wooden chair that sits against the opposite wall. It's a black tux that he rented yesterday at an old store right by the town's post office. 

He looks down, frowning, to steal a glimpse at his wristwatch. It is 6:15. 

He climbs to his feet, letting the shawl slide off his body, leaving him clothed in only a pair of thick track pants and a grey wife-beater. He shivers as he walks over to the fancy set of clothes and sluggishly collects them into his arms. 

It is time. He needs to get ready. 

___

He double checks the locks as he's leaving the house and takes the stairs two at a time when he goes down. He pauses for a moment before the glass doors of the cafe, staring expressionlessly at the cardboard square that hangs off the metal handle. 

CLOSED, it reads in a cheery hand of oversized loops and squiggly trails. He remembers penning the thing down on a Sunday afternoon, a week before the official opening of his cafe. He remembers not being able to sit still as his marker scratched across the rough brown surface, teeth worrying the nails of his free hand. 

He pulls his gaze away from the doorway and makes his way towards the car that's waiting in his drive. He texts his mother as he goes. 

San (6:45 AM) : I'll meet you there in fifteen minutes. Will pick up Mr. Jung on the way. 

___

San sees Wooyoung's father ambling down the porch-steps as he pulls into their driveway, he looks as unstable as a raft amidst a sea-storm. He wonders if he should get out and help but Mr. Jung is already at his window by the time he's done deciding. 

"Hello." He greets stoically as he unlocks the door for the old man and watches him climb into the car with the same kind of painful effort. 

"You okay?" He asks as Mr. Jung leans back against the headrest and shuts his eyes for a few moments. 

_It's like watching a boulder breathe._

A long inhale and a shaky little whistle as he breathes out. The man doesn't answer him until he's almost given up and is about to turn the key in its socket. 

"It's the damn tablets." Comes the gruff voice. San wonders when was the last time that the man ever spoke to someone. "They gave it to help me sleep but I swear they're draining my life."

San huffs as he looks out of the windshield, and his attention is snatched immediately by the acorn tree that stands tall beside the blue fence. Hanging beneath its trunk, suspended by a hefty barn rope is an old tyre that is collecting a small mound of snow on its curved surface. San remembers swinging there all summer when he was eleven. 

Crystal laughter and sweaty palms, at least three ice lollies had dripped down his shirts on each of those brilliant mornings. Childish screams of _Higher, Wooyoung, higher, push harder_ , presses against his eardrums and he listens quietly to the fading sounds of the distant past. 

He turns back around to find Mr. Jung looking at him with a worried expression on his face. Like a suicidal on a precipice watching someone drown in the roaring ocean below. 

San smiles, all teeth and no joy. "Pills are only good enough to pull you under. It does nothing about the exhaustion that follows you into your sleep. So how are you doing really?”

The man gives him a _Do you have your nuts around you_? look as he slams the door of the car shut. "Wonderful, son." He spits. "I'd join the Olympics if I had the money."

San sighs, he feels too tired to quip back. "I'll take you the hospital next week. Will you be okay till then?"

The man settles his black coat on his lap, grunts and proceeds to look out of the window. San shakes his head. 

"You mind if I play the radio?"

"Your car." Comes the reply. 

He reaches out to turn on the stereo and adjusts the station to one that's not playing a pointless ad. He finds one that's tuned to a peppy track from the seventies. Heavy drum arrangements settle into a violin solo that makes San think of packed dance floors and vinyl joggers. 

He turns the key hanging in the ignition and pulls out of Wooyoung's driveway. 

___

The church is nothing special, a small chapel built in the late nineties by a man who claimed to have seen God through a canopy of tangerines at the age of eleven when his mother, a comfort woman to the Japanese, had hidden him in the fruit basket when a troop of soldiers had marched across their town to recruit student combatants for training.

San has seen him a dozen times, when he used to attend Sunday mass with his family and couple of other times in departmental stores. The man was a walking fossil, cling-wrap skin and about three strands of silver hair on his eggshell head, and all the kids used to make bets on his sightings, three Mars bars for every time one of them returned with a photo of the ancient man who rarely ever left his mansion at the end of the town. San had earned his fair share of confectionaries, but it was always Wooyoung who went out of his way to attain snapshots of the man bent over the hyacinth bushes in his garden or while he took his sullen bull-terrier out for a walk. 

San sees his mother waiting by the gigantic wooden doors (the church walls had been broken down sometime at the beginning of the decade and the nave had been extended until it was rendered capable of accommodating a lot more than the twenty-five people capacity that it was originally built for), her head is as big as the iron knockers behind her and her face almost as impassive. 

She gathers him against her chest when he approaches. Coffee and aloe-vera gel. She's timeless. 

"We'll get in?" She asks, a gloved hand patting his cheek fervently. "The service is about to start."

Then she tries to look over his shoulder, hazel irises skirting around the sockets. "Mr.Jung?" She inquires. 

San pivots to take a look and doesn't find the man anywhere near the neat array of parked cars. He turns to his mother with a small smile, sweet and apologetic. 

"He must've slipped out for a smoke." He explains as he puts an arm around her petite shoulders and ushers her into the quiet buzzle of the church, like a muted orchestra of dragonfly wings. "Let's go. I'm sure he'll join us soon."

___

San slides into a bench at the very front of the lengthy aisles, his father is already there and props him up in a single arm hug when he approaches.

"All okay?" He asks, it's his version of hello. Pencil moustache rises up to meet the base of his nose as he gives his son the broadest smile he can muster this early in the morning. 

_You still make the monsters go away, you know?_

"Immaculate." San says and his father reaches out to pat him on the shoulder. He leaves his hand there. 

San looks around the vast place, eyes anime-wide, taking in the sight of the mauve azaleas hung around every reachable inch of the high walls, at the bleak sunlight taking on a range of different pigments as it filters in through the painted glass of the archaic windows. His gaze pauses at a familiar face standing up high among a crowd of men of varied ages, all dressed in black suits, talking with hushed voices and animated hands.

The boy is already looking at San when their eyes meet, dapper to the point of perfection, his hair slicked-back to a low quiff, a blush-pink corsage pinned to his black jacket; if it weren't for that toothy smile San's gaze might have almost skimmed past him. He looks like he belongs on a billboard somewhere. 

_My Mingi._

The tall boy frowns at San as he fishes something out of his pocket, then he holds up his metal-cased iPhone and points at the screen. San's own one vibrates in his hands. 

Mingi (7:39 AM) : You look beautiful. 

San smiles as he texts back. 

San (7:39 AM) : Speak for yourself, movie-star. You feeling fine? 

Mingi (7:40AM) : I would've been on the floor if I hadn't seen you just now. I slept for like ten minutes last night. 

San (7:40AM) : I'm still here. Stop biting your nails. 

San looks up and Mingi yanks his own hand away from his buttercup lips. He gives him a sheepish smile and San shakes his head. 

San's phone dings again and he unlocks it with a scowl. 

Mingi (7:42AM) : San

Mingi (7:42AM) : I would thank you but how insufficient would that be? 

San (7:42AM) : You have nothing to thank me for, Geyser. 

Mingi (7:43 AM) : Shut up and listen. 

Mingi (7:43AM) : *Read.

San scoffs at the screen. His father asks him if anything’s wrong. Someone sneezes at the back of the aisles and stage-whispers an apology. He lets his dad know that he’s fine with a little squeeze of his knee.

Mingi (7:45 AM) : You saved my life, San-berry. The second you walked into that cafeteria with your handsome boyfriend. Even as I took those pills I knew I would see you on the other side, breathing or not. 

Mingi (7:46AM) : And I did. You stood there smiling at the end of my ward and I knew I was saved again. I've hung onto your names as if they were amulets on more nights than you can even imagine. 

MINGI (7:46AM) : I love you. More than the heart allows. Up to the point that it might even be illegal. I love you. Always. 

San looks up and his vision is unstable. He struggles to see Mingi through the growing film of tears. Once he's blinked the first of them out he sees that the boy is beaming at him, jaw taut as he holds back his own batch of sobs. 

_You look so ugly when you cry,_ whispers a familiar voice at the back of his head. 

He laughs a little and Mingi smiles at the sight. 

He blows San a kiss. 

He catches it and tucks it into his pocket. 

___

A strong breeze screams with the pitch of an old woman as it rushes in through the windowpanes. The snowfall thickens to a white flurry outside, San can barely see past the churchyard.

___

One Mississippi. 

People start filing in in broken clusters. There are barely any seats left in the aisles. 

Two Mississippi. 

San unlocks his phone again. He closes the widget of his conversation with Mingi and opens the call log. 

He clicks the first number in his speed-dial and places the device against his ear. 

Three Mississippi. 

"Hey. You've reached Wooyoung's phone. If I'm not around to pick up then I'm probably being monopolized by my boyfriend. Or dead. Just leave a message for good measure in any case."

Three Mississippi. 

Time doesn't stop but San swears he sees the studded second hand on his watch freeze. Maybe he needs to give it in for a service session. 

The snowflakes outside are immobilized in their race down to the carpeted ground, stunned against the lead sky in sharp-edged crystals. 

Not a single leaf flutters in the mango tree by the window. 

_Which service station do I take an entire planet to?_

___

Three Mississippi. 

The hand that is placed on his shoulder is sheathed in black leather gloves. 

San turns. 

The universe zeroes in. A reverse big bang. 

Imploding. 

Into a single boxy smile. And honey-almond skin. 

Wooyoung is blond again. 

San touches his knuckles with light fingers, maple syrup smile smeared all over his face. 

"Wait for too long?" Asks the boy as he walks around to take the empty seat on his other side. "Sorry. Got held up at the lab."

___

San walks as if in a trance up to the altar, led by a warm palm, now un-gloved. 

The crowd starts coming back to life with hushed conversations, the kind that makes candle-lights flicker in a still room. He sees his parents beaming at him from the front seats. Mr. Jung sits two rows behind them, his eyes are on his son, face more alive than San has ever seen it being. 

Wooyoung gives his hand a small squeeze and turns back with a swarovski twinkle in his eyes. He then unthreads their fingers as he goes to stand behind a nervous Mingi. 

Yunho's suit is white, his hair aqua blue. He offers San his emoji smile as he walks past him, touching the silver lapels of the jacket collar with his fingers as he goes. 

He sees Wooyoung smirk over the heads of the skyscraper grooms, and giggles when the boy blows a raspberry at him. He hears Yunho snort and turns to see if the tiny Minister has taken any notice of the antics. 

Thankfully the man stands with an oblivious frown on his face, nose buried in the giant book he's holding. He turns back to Wooyoung and squints his eyes, letting his tongue loll out above his chin. 

He watches both Mingi and him chortle quietly into their jacket sleeves. 

___

_In sickness and in health._

_For richer, for poorer._

_Even when you fart and pretend as if you don't know who it is._

_Also through your explosive artist blocks._

_When you bring home dirty cats from the streets._

_And when we stand heaving on our biggest stages and when we toast our grandest successes._

_Right through our best days and our lowest._

_For as long as we both shall live._

San watches Mingi sob as he places the platinum band over his boyfriend’s finger and looks up to peek into his husband’s eyes and he thinks, _This is what it’s like, to love someone this brilliant._

___

Everybody stands in diffused semicircles around the front steps, hands in jacket pockets or tucked beneath silk stoles of varied colours, the oranges and blues standing in bright contrast against the incandescent backdrop of the snow. San's mother links her arm through the crook of his and sighs, a frustrated sound of chores not done right after they're told, a midnight call of _San, why are you still up_? from downstairs.

"What, Ma?" He asks, patting the soft hand that is curled around his elbow. 

They look at Wooyoung and Yunho, who are crouched around Yunho's car, a royal-blue Cadillac that stands in the driveway with the hood down, as they clear the path by shovelling snow away from the caked in tyres. Mingi sits behind the wheel, an observant frown stitching his brows together as he inspects something in the dashboard. Small mounds of snow collects over his wide shoulders and auburn hair. 

_A crown of fallen celestials for the most beautiful boy_.

"I want to see you get married, too, Sannie." Says the woman on his side, stealing the words out of the numerous pages in history, from the very mouths of a million concerned mothers before her. "He's even moved in with you, both your jobs are stable." She states and then in an urgent whisper she adds, "He's healthy now, too, isn't he? Apart from the - what do you call it?" She rubs her temple with a thumb. "Enzyme technique, right?"

"Enzyme replacement therapy." San answers, the breathing epitome of patience. 

"Yes, that." Continues his mother "He's absolutely fine other than the monthly visits right?" 

"I'd marry him even if I had to tent down by his hospital bed. For the rest of my life, if it came to that." San answers, all the previous nonchalance crumbling like a tower of stones. 

"Then what are you waiting for?" Asks his mother. 

And San thinks, _You really don't see it, do you_?

_What else is a marriage going to add to my relationship with that boy? How much more married can you be to a person than sorting their tax returns with half-filled glasses of cheap wine on gloomy Saturday nights?_

_He walks in to use the toilet when I'm bent over the sink shaving, Ma. I'd have to die and meld my soul into the cosmic fabric of his own if I wanted to get any closer to him._

Out loud he says, "His promotion. We're waiting for him to get bumped up as an SRF. And we'll give it a thought right after that, okay?"

His mother opens her mouth in protest, face twisted by a heavy scowl, when a call of his name has them both turn in the direction of Yunho's car. 

It's Wooyoung, waving an excited arm from the backseat. "Let's go." He hollers and San leans down to kiss his mother on the cheek. 

"And where is it that you're going now? I know you're both too thick for life but newly married couples need a teensy bit of time before they can go haranguing around like a bunch of fools, San." 

He laughs at her livid rush of words and kisses her fuming cheek again. 

"Just a little detour. Then they're off to Iceland in the evening." He detaches himself from her soft embrace. "Nothing stupid, I promise." He calls over his shoulder as he jogs over to the waiting trio. 

A jump over the closed door, long limbs flung across the headrest of Yunho's seat, and San is in Wooyoung's arms again. 

Timid kiss placed over the brown strands of hair covering San's right temple and the rest of the world melts away like one of those overpriced dome desserts Wooyoung had bought him in Italy two summers ago. 

"Ready, baby?" Is the whisper that tickles his ear-lobe. 

"Ready."

___

They're at the vineyard again, to nobody's surprise, walking through the slippery path, seemingly endless rows of thick cables running horizontally on both sides. San looks around to take in the view, blowing warm breath into his left hand as the other one is interlaced with Wooyoung's and tucked snugly into his coat pocket. 

The same spread of gravel, the same charcoal skies. It's like time had tried to touch the place and had simply withered away around its grey-stone boundaries. 

Mingi and Yunho are already standing at the dais when they reach the clearing. They're kicking flurries of snow at each other, breathing life into the still air with their chiming laughter. Wooyoung lets go of his hand to go join the rowdy couple and is welcomed eagerly with a snowball in the face. 

San feels choked up at the sight, but it is a good kind of lump that troubles his throat now. The tears are welcome this time. 

Yunho has Mingi in a headlock and his best friend calls for his help, alabaster skin reddening amidst the buff arms. 

Wooyoung stands laughing at the side, face akin to a three year old who's found the most anticipated Christmas gift in a mound under the tree. 

Wooyoung stands laughing. 

San's smile is quiet, not disturbing a single atom that surrounds his face. He crosses his arms across his chest, watching the bell-chime giggles pouring out of the only man he's ever wanted to share his bed with. In the faded smog of the opalescent moonlight that streams in through his window, _that_ is the only body he wants against his own under the heated blankets, the only fingers that will encircle his wrists as they're pinned to the mattress. 

There is but one name that he will whisper into the diaphanous nights.

Only one name that he'll hear through the cacophony of a hundred unruly crowds. 

_I'll live a million mundane days with you and still want no other voice screaming my name from upstairs._

_Thank you for allowing me to be a quiet observer of your life for so long, for letting me stand watch in the side-lines as you grew through the decayed nights that plagued your dreams. Thank you for looking over mine._

Wooyoung turns to look at San, amused eyes and a fruit roll of a smile. He waves his hand as he calls for him to come over, russet skin standing out like flames against the ivory snow. 

"I'm waiting, Haku-San." He shouts, cocking his head to the side. 

_Thank you for remembering my name for me._

Wooyoung is blond again. He is twenty-five and spends every third Friday of the month on blue hospital beds, needles stuck into his skin like meticulously arranged bouquets of primroses. 

He forgets to close the door when he leaves the room and never finishes a meal without staining the front of his shirt. 

He also laughs the loudest at forgotten jokes and never lets San clamber out of bed every morning without a half-awake kiss. 

He will face the second heart attack of his life in two months. It'll also happen to be the last one to ever take over his body. 

But San isn't aware of that now.

So he goes, boots sloshing through the mounds of white jello spread across the uneven ground. He doesn't like the way the moisture seeps into the hem of his pant-sleeves. But he goes anyway. 

Because it is Wooyoung on the other side. It is Wooyoung who wants him close, plush lips smiling as he's pulled into a heavy kiss. 

And Wooyoung is his best friend. 

*****

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> If you've made it this far, thank you for your time and patience. I hope you liked it up there.
> 
> Avalokan means "Careful Observation" and I believe that I can't possibly come up with a better title for this piece of mine. Because I haven't really written anything about these two boys, I didn't sit down and wrack my brains for words to outline a story. This fic was more of an overlook of two beautiful lives that I've come to love in the past few weeks.
> 
> So, again, thank you for sharing a few months of my life with me. That is exactly what you did when you read those 33000 words.
> 
>   
> Feel free to use the section below to tell me what you think. I love long comments, they make my day. 
> 
> And until next time.
> 
> All the love  
> -H
> 
> PS: This is a work of fiction and I would like all the readers to see it that way. I have received comments that have made me want to take the story down. I do not want any kind of hate or shade thrown at me for sharing something that I've created. Anyone who decides to remark upon my story better keep it respectful or can keep their opinions to themselves. I have given out fair warning at the beginning of the fic, anyone who still proceeded to go through my work and hurt themselves are not my responsibility. 
> 
> Sorry for the long note. 
> 
> But again,  
> All the love ❤
> 
> Twitter: @GetARoomKaiSoo


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